Harmony Shepard and the Blood Sport
by Guardian54
Summary: The true 1994-1995 school year of Hogwarts, not the fake Harmony published later on as the "Goblet of Fire" to raise funds for the GLA. This is the deconstruction of this archaic blood sport, the scientific explanation of magic, and the general epic power of TECHNOLOGY. On the Mary Sue Litmus Test, Harry is 84, Harmony is about 50, so... Sue, but less than HIM.
1. Oh Hi There Harry!

A/N:_** I find it very alarming that November 3, 1981 is a Tuesday, and Harry Potter, the first book, was supposed to have started on a Tuesday… so Harry was missing for 3 full days in between the night of the 31st and showing up with Hagrid. Let's get rid of that fact and assume that he was placed with the Dursleys in the night of Sunday, November 1, 1981 after a health check at Hogwarts with Pomfrey.**_

I followed my tradition of not finishing up the fic in a series before putting up the next fic's first chapter, so that any subscribers can remember to add the next one to alert. This was originally gonna be called "Harmony Shepard and the Non-Consensual Deathmatch" but then I thought that was too long, and this was more descriptive anyhow.

* * *

Chapter 1: Oh Hi There Harry!

_Early August, 1994_

Harmony was studying under her mother what it meant to run a multinational organization from the hot seat instead of being a mere field grunt. Yes, physical and psychological conditioning for fighting was nice, but it wasn't necessary for the real power, the leaders, to have it. Hermione had been briefed on their family business earlier in the summer with her and her father doing the talking. Jane Shepard came back halfway through and after greeting her daughters started filling Harmony in on the events of the current world war which had expanded to include the Japanese. It was probably the worst possible thing for that island nation which had been badly fucked over by the Psychic Dominator Disaster, since the current Allied war plan was a temporary ceasefire with the Soviets (the Soviets agreed) so that they could stomp the 1930s-esque Japanese mindset down again. It was as if the Japanese didn't understand SI didn't want another Battle of the Niigata Line with how they were attacking shipping in the Pacific.

The Chinese were raring to go to war with the Japanese and get revenge for World War Two and everything before that, since nationalistic sentiment was still strong after the peaceful resolution of Tiananmen five years ago. However the continental power had agreed to let the North American nations handle most of the naval combat first since they didn't have a strong navy. The Japanese had tried to land forces on Chinese soil already… and failed horribly, being overrun within hours of landing and beaten back into the sea. Their sci-fi obsessed weapons developers didn't seem to realize that the more flexibility and large moving parts one tried to build into a weapons system, the less robust it tended to be. In other words, their Tsunami Tanks had to flank or get to the rear (in the case of old omni-directionally protected heavy tanks still in common use like the T-1955 series) to even have a chance at penetrating modern Main Battle Tanks at any range. As for their VX's, Tengus, and Wings… the less said the better for one to not laugh to death.

Even though some magic was probably used in those things to make them work at all, large amounts of energy in terms of material physics was still far more potent due to wizard-kind's lack of quantitative understanding, even in Japan. Just about the only thing they had that was actually reasonably effective was the Wave Force Artillery family of technologies, based on Artillery Magic i.e. plasma magnetic resonance containment, something Japanese wizards seemed to specialize in. Oh, and there were the huge-ass Floating Fortresses that they apparently thought for whatever reason they could move covertly. Yes, they were camouflaged well with seemingly adaptive camouflage patterns (read: complicated warding schemes), but the less concealed magnetometric, heat and radar signatures put together were still more than obvious enough for satellites to pick up on the floating cities. That meant SI and the other allies all had several missiles ready in their silos targeting each, every missile loaded with many MIRVs to shotgun them to the bottom of the ocean if need be despite all their stealth and size.

Harmony had been working in her mother's office for several weeks when she received a letter one day just after lunch break, Hedwig flying in the open office window. It read:

_Dear Harmony:_

_Everything's going as usual around here, Dudley's diet isn't going well, my aunt found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told __him they'd have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window. Bit stupid really, now he hasn't even got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind off things. I remember you mentioning it when I told you he'd gotten it that it was horribly biologically inaccurate and not nearly as exhilarating as a good game that makes you feel like you are actually hacking your way through a zombie apocalypse._

_My scar woke me up this morning, though. I had a dream with Wormtail, Voldemort, a big snake called Nagini, and an old man, a Muggle, who found their hideout and who Voldemort killed. Last time my scar hurt, Voldemort was at Hogwarts, but I don't think he can be anywhere near me now if that dream was a vision of where he is. I'm hoping it's not just typical curse scar flare-ups or something similarly stupid that I shouldn't bother you with… I wrote to Sirius as well, in case he might know something._

_Harry_

"Mother, I need to run an errand tomorrow, something interesting has come up with regards to the magical terrorism situation in Britain." Harmony told her mother.

Jane looked up from the papers she was reading over and said "Do what you feel is best, Harmony, the Wizarding World is your responsibility after all."

"Yes Mother."

* * *

The next morning she parked her car (it was way easier to re-learn with this casual practice than under combat conditions) in front of Number Four, Privet Drive, disembarked, locking the doors, and marched up to the front door with four bodyguards with her (she would have brought two, but being one-handed meant she was cautious and wanted to outnumber the opponent), rapping smartly on it. It opened soon enough and… "Good day, Vernon Dursley, I have come by for a check-up on Harry. Tell him Harmony Shepard is here to visit." She said with a grimace at the obese man.

"Freaks like you aren't welcome here, get out…" A pistol came out, pointed at him from the brunette's hip. "This is breaking and entering you know!" He was turning a shade of puce. The four guards drew their guns as well.

Harmony chuckled "How about you have a heart attack now and drop dead? You're going to make me sick when it comes time to do janitorial duty with trash like you. Where is Harry?"

"BOY! BOY, GET OUT HERE!" Vernon shouted back into the house.

With a gesture of her head her guards had Vernon pushed aside and she walked into the house, sneering. "Totally normal for an average, normal family to yell regularly like that, hmm? Go sit with your family in the kitchen, this need not concern you, and no harm will befall you if you if…" Harmony trailed off as she entered the kitchen and saw the abomination of a diet that Petunia was forcing the whole family to follow. "…You psychos… WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU SHOULD KEEP UP YOUR USUAL UNHEALTHY DIET SO YOU CAN ALL GET HEART ATTACKS AND DIE FASTER! It'll be good riddance for humanity, after all, given scum like you are the sort considered too unhealthy to be conscripted for the War." She spat.

"Hello, Harmony." Harry greeted.

"Hey Harry. I noticed you have a much smaller grapefruit quarter. We'll have you out of here soon, Ron said they were planning to come pick you up sometime in the next couple days… freeze, brat!" The gun was levelled again, this time at Vernon's plate where Dudley's fat hand was trying to steal his father's grapefruit quarter. "In a NORMAL family, children do not take parent's food without asking and receiving permission first, for parents know better due to more experience with efficient resource allocation. In a NORMAL family parents do not allow one child under their care to get away with everything while the other is blamed for everything like how Hitler blamed the Jews, you fucking fascist scum. I could and should just have you all killed—no one would ever question just another tragic accident—and liberate Harry from this place via adoption, but I am hoping, for Dudley at least, that you are not too lost to be saved yet. I am tired of killing from my work in the past few months, so don't push me, please and thank you. Harry, let's go somewhere private and talk about the vision you mailed me about… if Voldemort's already making plans to come back and Pettigrew has rejoined him already we might have less time to put down this terrorist movement than we'd have liked."

"Voldemort? Lord Voldemort? The one who killed a lot of people in the 70s until Harry bounced his curse and killed him?" Petunia said, sounding frightened.

Harmony nodded "The same. He's coming back and a recent prophecy that has already begun to be fulfilled says he'll be greater and more terrible than ever before. His goal is to rid the world of non-magicals due to his own delusions of adequacy and megalomania, now if you'll excuse me I have essential information to obtain from Harry." Petunia sat down shakily in her chair, Dudley looked like he was trying to think, and Vernon was still purple with anger where he sat. "Soldiers, keep an eye on things down here, I won't be long."

"Yes, ma'am." The four guards nodded in unison before she pulled him to the living room to talk.

Petunia looked over at Vernon uneasily, wondering what sort of trouble her husband had gotten them into this time and who these people were… until her eyes settled on the armbands they wore, which had a distinctive Red Maple Leaf with Bars pattern printed onto a mottled green and brown camo background. She drew in a breath sharply, _Shepard… so that was what she meant to warn us with… then she was being truthful when she told us not to mess with her or hers…_ She tugged on her husband's sleeve and whispered "Look at the armbands."

He gasped too upon realizing just which "spoilt princess"—as Vernon mumbled under his breath—they were dealing with. "SI Spec Ops, huh? Damned bastards think they can go around doing whatever they want and get away with it just because of diplomatic influence and public opinion…" He grumbled.

"Yeah, we're sort of Spec Ops, and I say sort of because we're regularly called up to HQ for assorted mostly menial jobs." The nearest one said "No, we don't do photos with fans, and we don't do autographs either."

Vernon and Petunia stared. One of the others chuckled and told them "Sorry, the last time he substituted for a front gate guard who called in sick at our London HQ, he got scrutiny that was a bit too close to be comfortable from some tourists, since our gate guards actually do regular group photos with tourists in front of HQ as part of their job description. Still, it seems your parenting skills leave a great deal to be desired, better fix it up before your son ends up in jail as a juvenile delinquent or maybe charged and tried as an adult if he does anything too extreme… and we will get you Dursley if you are dumb enough to try anything stupid against Potter. In fact, we could get you outside of court if you do anything too dumb and resolve it on our own. Hey, guys, you have the disc the boss told us to bring?"

"Yeah, not sure who she got to take this footage, but it's pretty sick, literally and figuratively." One of the four guards put the disc into the CD player the Dursleys had under their kitchen TV and turned down the volume as she turned away from the sight of her current superior yanking a man's pants down with knife in hand to watch the Dursleys' reaction. None of them knew the disc had been passed from the hands of a older Harmony into the hands of her past self with thanks from said past self for making the recording.

It took ten seconds for Petunia to bend herself over the kitchen sink, fifteen for Vernon to pass out from critically high blood pressure, and less than five more for Dudley to be reduced to a blubbering mass on the ground. The grand finale was the obese boy soiling himself in pure terror when Harmony walked back in with Harry in tow. She took a look over the room, sighed, and strode over to the TV where the image of herself was currently making slices out of Pettigrew's left testicle. She hit the stop button twice before hitting eject. "What did I tell you guys about scaring them too badly? Look, Petunia, I'm not here to kill anyone unless you try to attack me first, I'm just here to get some information from Harry and to make sure you know exactly whose protection he is under. I also thought that if Harry did detect Voldemort rising again, it would be better for you to be warned as well. Harry's presence here fuels powerful blood wards that keep him and your family safe, and he needs only stay here a few weeks a year to charge them." She stopped, as if expecting something. "No questions on how I knew that, Harry?"

Harry chuckled, his words showing that he'd matured quite a bit mentally over the summer in some aspects "Harmony, I know now that your family is powerful enough to get away with all sorts of stuff, I don't need to know who they are to not be surprised at you probably hiring ward experts outside of channels I know of to inspect this area if you're that interested in me." _On the other hand the stalker behaviour is way creepier than Ginny's fan-girl behaviour back in the summer before Second year… at least she basically got over that whereas you're getting more and more stalker-y. I mean it's nice to know you care and all, but really… this is a bit too close for comfort._

She smirked, since a real smile would be hard to pull off without teeth grinding thanks to that thought of his that he practically yelled to everyone mentally, making her now internally quite irate. "Good reasoning Harry." _Though not completely correct, it's close enough…_ She turned to her two guards "Wake the walrus up, we should be leaving soon, and I want to make sure that he understands what it means for Harry to be under my aegis."

There was knocking at the front door just after they woke Vernon up, and she gestured him toward it. There was talking, some man laughing, and Vernon answering curtly. Then the front door closed and Harmony narrowed her eyes at the sound of ripping paper. He looked extremely angry when he came back and zeroed in on Harry "You, in the living room. Now."

"If any of them tries anything dumb, shoot them all, come with me, you." Harmony said loudly to her guards before beckoning one of them and walking off with Harry to the living room, pistol in its holster in case Vernon tried to snatch the weapon. She was still having a hard time adjusting to single-handed combat.

"So… This just arrived. A letter. About you." Vernon was brandishing a piece of purple writing paper.

"Who the hell writes on purple, it gives bad contrast to every other colour except maybe white and yellow, and unless it's more paint than ink those two colours wouldn't show up on it anyhow." Harmony said, eyes still narrowed.

Vernon looked astonished that she'd said something that made total sense to him. On the other hand, Harmony felt like she needed to shed skin flakes for a month to feel clean again after having made sense to the scumbag. He read Mrs. Weasley's letter aloud, which indicated the Quidditch World Cup final would start on Monday night and that Harry would be welcome to stay for the rest of the summer. She mentioned hoping she'd put enough stamps on and Harmony immediately had a very good idea what the outside of the envelope might look like.

"Look at this." Vernon held up the envelope in question and it matched Harmony's expectations very well.

"Opening other people's mail is something NORMAL people don't do." She quipped.

Harry shrugged, grinning at her being there to back him up "She did put enough stamps on, then."

"The postman noticed," Vernon's teeth were gritted "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was _funny._"

"What a freak, obsessing over a few extra stamps." The adult soldier in the room said suddenly with a snort of contempt "I can just imagine you trying to watch a sitcom and dying of a heart attack just because people don't act exactly like you think they should. Boss, why don't we just fire this guy from Grunnings and put someone with a brain and less lard in? I mean, you own the company so you should do right by it, yeah?"

"Because then I'd have to buy up lots of shares of whatever place he works at next, and I don't feel he's worth the while for that unless he actively tries to run for it, in which case we might as well terminate him and be done with it." Harmony said smoothly. "Harry will be going to this event."

Vernon's face was twisting funnily and Harmony was wishing he'd drop dead from a heart attack already. However, as typical of how the world worked, the piece of shit stayed alive. "Who is this woman?"

"You've seen her. She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog—" He hesitated, before glancing to his side at a brunette bush towering over him and continuing "Hogwarts Express."

Vernon's face purpled again until the armed guard standing around with a submachine gun cleared his throat, reminding him who was in charge around here. He huffed before turning back to Harry "Dumpy sort of woman? Load of children with red hair?"

"You have a son who has twice as much girth than he is tall, Dursley." Harmony snapped. Some might say Dudley was wider than he was tall, but that in the visual sense was physically impossible. On the other hand, having a waist _diameter_ significantly over one metre was, as Dudley proved, possible. "NORMAL people do not allow such a thing to happen with their children."

Vernon shuddered at the attack on his normality before his piggy eyes darted to the guard's gun again and he thought better of shouting. "Quidditch… _Quidditch…_ what is this rubbish?"

Harry was annoyed but Harmony beat hi to answering and annoyed him further "The stupidest sport ever invented by someone over the age of two. Don't look at me like that Harry, I've run the correlation of Seeker catches and game wins, and there's a covariance of over 0.95, so practically speaking only the Seeker matters. It started as a man to man challenge of flying skills, but watching two men try to find a small yellow ball flying around a huge pitch was too boring for the audience, so they added what is basically a handball game in mid-air. After that they added the element of danger, two large black balls flying around trying to ram the players, and body guards armed with bats against those black balls, and thus we have modern Quidditch. It remains the dumbest sport in existence though since only one player really decides matches."

Vernon was gaping "How… HOW CAN YOU MAKE IT SOUND SO NORMAL?"

"Calm down, Dursley, or he'll calm you down for you." Harmony growled, jerking her left thumb at the guard in the room.

Vernon reigned himself in "…Your words almost sounded like the development of a normal sport… what an abomination against nature… 'send us your answer… in the normal way.' What does she mean, 'the normal way'?"

"Normal for us, you know, owl post. That's what's normal for wizards." Harry said.

Vernon shook with anger and shot a nervous look at the window at the mention of that word "How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?" his face was now a lethal-looking purple "You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back…"

"Only after Dudley finished with them." Harry barked back, emboldened by the force projection on his side in the room.

"I will not be spoken to like that!"

Harry laughed before waving beside him "With all due respect, Vernon, I do not think you have a choice." There was a double-click and Vernon's pupils contracted with fear at the pistol pointed at his head in the brunette's hand.

"Harry doesn't only have a mass murderer of a godfather, you know, his best friend has killed just as many people, if not more." She said off-handed, before adding. "And remember, your police system has no other evidence of these threats than your word versus ours, and you can guess whose will prevail. I know full well you have no security cameras in the house, you're terrified the footage would be used against you in some way or another."

"Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy… this stupid…" The finger settling on the trigger made Vernon shift gears again "this World Cup thing. You write and tell these… these _Weasleys_ they're to pick you up, mind. I haven't got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your… your godfather… tell him… tell him you're going."

"Good, I suppose my work here is done, since they're coming to pick you up soon, it would probably be better for Ron to pick you up from here than from my place." She leaned closer until Harry blushed from her hot breath on his ear—teasing teenaged guys was so _easy_ and quite amusing to boot—and whispered "besides, I think you want to see the reactions the Dursleys have to the Weasleys coming by, whatever means they might use, right?"

He chuckled nervously "Yeah, sounds good to me."

"Damned abominations trying to court each other like normal people would…" Vernon muttered too low for Harry to make out but enough for Harmony to hear and the sound modulator in one ear of the guard to perceive.

"What the fuck was that, you OCD lunatic?" Harmony had whipped back. She narrowed her eyes "I'm starting to think the Chinese had it right back in the day when relatives could be persecuted by association, because some things probably do have genetic elements, or at least indoctrination-related elements, like religious fundamentalism, and relatives get a far greater dose of that bullshit than tolerable, meaning we have to put them all down like the rabid animals they are." She turned her head toward Harry "Well, Harry, since you're not too closely related to these freaks, and not at all directly to this thing, I'll let you show me around your room… oh, and Dursley?" She looked back again "You really should consider choosing at least one theme song for yourself, I recommend _I Am A Walrus_ by John Lennon."

"Theme songs, Harmony? Really? What is yours then?" Harry asked as he led the way up the stairs.

The answer she gave sounded vaguely familiar from somewhere and completely unsurprising for some reason Harry couldn't quite remember. As for why he couldn't, well, the last time he'd heard that song name (though with slightly different lyrical choices) he was only a yearling. "Muggleborn Hero, what else could it be?"

Somewhere else, Lily Potter was laughing her ass off while double-facepalming due to being conflicted between the two reactions.

"Oh look, Pig's here." Harmony commented after they entered the room, her in the lead, while Harry noticed Hedwig looked annoyed. She tried to snatch him out of the air but failed, resulting in him glancing off the side of Harry's head "Ugh, coordination is STILL off…"

Harry bent down after noticing the letter dropped at his feet "Look, Harmony…" He opened the envelope and began reading—she read over his shoulder with ease—before saying "Oh, right, what did you mean by…" His eyes reached the right line "Ron called him Pig too?"

Harmony nodded as they continued reading "Yeah, Ginny named him, it means small or petty, and he refuses to answer to anything else, so now he's Pig. Looks like the Weasleys were going to break you out regardless… Hmm, if she's heading over this afternoon, Mom and Dad are letting Hermione out of training early so she can not be sore all over at the game, my family might recover fast but still with the regimen she's being put under… she's going to be hurting for at least a day or so. Yep, I'm coming over tomorrow, sounds right to me, I don't have that much time to burn with work and rehab and all. Percy's started work at the Department of International Cooperation? Hmm… what do you say the shit that is gonna go down this year has to do with international students? I mean, I've heard word from my sources that they're trying to start the Triwizard Tournament back up…"

"Triwizard Tournament? Sounds a little bit familiar from somewhere…"

Harmony nodded. "Yeah, our books occasionally make mention of it, it's basically picking one kid from each school for a dangerous contest a lot of Champions have died in. They don't have to fight each other in death-matches and during the competition rules prohibit harming other champions, but there's nothing against siccing the defenders of a maze on the other champions or something similar. Fortunately, the champions are only chosen from those whose names are entered, so…" She had a broad smirk on her face by this point.

Harry smirked back "…Glad I won't be entering."

"I'm glad too, much less ass I'd have to keep an eye on." She replied, chuckling as Harry blushed at the thought of her going over his rear end with a magnifying glass… then she spliced a gas mask into the thought and his face turned neutral instead of an awkward grin "I'm considering entering just to deconstruct every event and basically demonstrate why such a blood sport should not be restarted, ever." She stopped her balled-fist-plus-maniacal-grin pose to point out a minor issue "You should write your reply to Ron."

"Oh, yeah…" He scribbled a letter on a piece of parchment. "Hey, d'you think Mrs. Weasley's stationary was purple because the twins decided to charm it and she didn't bother turning it back?"

Harmony shrugged "Makes sense, cause writing on purple with black ink would have been a pain in the ass to read over… or maybe she told them to send it off because the food was about to burn or something, and they messed with it en route."

"Maybe… hey Pig! Come here, I need you to take my answer back!"

The owl settled down on top of Hedwig's cage, and she looked up at it, unimpressed. Harry thought she was daring it to come closer. Harmony thought it was a warning of I will kill you if you try shitting on me. Harmony watched Harry try to tie the note to the owl's leg with difficulty as it hopped up and down… then lent her only hand to help hold the critter down for now. At least Flare was a lot more tame compared to this one… she'd been friendly on the train to the little fellow but soon decided to hide her head under her wing due to his hyperactive and loud nature which seemed to get on her nerves.

The moment they both let go the owl zipped out the window and was out of sight within seconds. Harry turned to Hedwig and asked her if she could take a letter to Sirius. Harmony interrupted with "Can I read it first?" A few moments later she said "This will bring him back up north, but that won't hurt because at least we'll be able to rendezvous more securely, face to face before I assign him some of the family protections. I don't want to send people to protect him and have him panic. With a bit of help he should have no problem walking freely around, say, Canada with only two or three bodyguards, though as an ex-prankster he might not think much of that as freedom. If he insists on staying in Britain to be close despite the quick transportation we can have standing by for him… well then that might be a little more difficult, but we'll still be able to keep him in good condition and relatively free, maybe have him participate in our studies of how Animagi and magic in general work. You know as well as I do that sooner or later technology will advance and the Magical World will no longer be able to hide itself. When that day comes… I don't want a war and enslavement of the Magicals."

"Makes sense…" Harry's (very accurate) thought was _Feels like I'm in the presence of a dictatorial princess… one who seems to enjoy deconstructing people personally._ "I hope when we get return mail telling us he's back and would like to contact us you can arrange the protection without any problems happening, Harmony."

"You can count on me, Harry, you know that."

"Yeah… yeah I do." He was tying the letter around Hedwig's leg, she was standing completely still as if demonstrating how real post owls should behave. "I'll be at Ron's when you get back, all right?" He told the snowy owl. She nipped his finger affectionately before spreading her wings, lifting off with a few flaps and exiting via window. "Do you want to share some of the cake I still have left over?"

She smirked "I am so glad my men installed a fridge in your room, otherwise… ugh. Sure, how are the rations Hermione and I sent you?"

"Well they're giving me enough fibre to keep me from getting constipated, that's for sure…" Harry said as he pulled the leftover cake from the fridge along with some meat pie from Mrs. Weasley. The paper plates she'd sent him were very useful, and she accepted one of the spare forks he had with only a casual examination and passing approval.

She smiled, digging in "Hmm, this is pretty good. I don't usually eat cake, but I'm glad Mrs. Weasley's work isn't like those supermarket cakes with an abominable amount of frosting that make you feel sickly after only a slice or two."

"And I'm glad for that, since it would probably make me feel ill too. Why don't you have a seat?" Harry motioned at the bed.

She shook her head "Nah, I prefer not to sit on beds, unless the occasion is serious enough for everyone to have to sit, I'm injured, or I'm tired." She was leaning against the wall while he was seated at his desk. He tried to stand up but the bump of her right wrist stump on the top of his head kept him down. "No, Harry, I do not feel the need to sit down, just relax, it's not like you have to pamper me as a girlfriend. Let's just talk."

The conversation between the two proceeded from there. Downstairs however, the guards were starting to get a bit bored. "So, how long d'you think their play date's going to last?" One female guard asked the others.

One of the men shrugged "I don't know, but if it lasts less than fifteen minutes the boss is probably going to find some other boy, cause he'd have way too little staying power."

* * *

OMAKE: House-Husbandry (requested by miner249er)

(Translation: what the future would be if Harmony let things proceed without decisive action on her part. If anyone here is strongly OOC it is Harry, since he has a macho complex as proven in Book 4 "She was a foot taller than me")

_Sometime in 2014_

"I'm home!" Harmony said in her usual sing-song homecoming tone… and got no reaction. _Hmm, he must be taking a nap… yeah his signature says he's sleeping. Makes sense given the kids are all visiting with their grandparents at The Hive and how he takes care of everything about them except for breastfeeding._ She took off her shoes and socks and left them in the foyer, trading them for a pair of crocs (a type of slippers without fuzziness) before walking upstairs and poking her head into their bedroom to find Harry, as expected, sleeping. She smirked and headed downstairs to, for the first time in the last four weeks or so, make dinner.

Halfway through employing her rather mediocre cooking skills (fortunately not as bad as Aunt Hannah's apocalyptic abilities) she heard his footsteps leaving their room and felt his psionic signature doing the same, indicating it wasn't another of the occasional jokes he'd play on her. "You should have just woken me up." He said.

"Nah, it's not like food matters that much to me, unlike for you or the kids, which is why you are the master of the kitchen." She said. "As long as it's reasonably edible it's fine by my standards."

"Eh, I guess I can't blame you for not wanting to put so many flavourings in, I suppose it IS healthier this way…" She felt his hands creep under her arms and wrap themselves around the underside of her breasts. His face buried itself in her hair, against the back of her neck, and he inhaled deeply. "I'm guessing you want to use this time when the kids aren't home to the fullest?" She didn't give him time to answer, knowing he knew he didn't need to. "Alright, after I finish this we'll have to wait for it to cool off anyhow, we can get started then, eat, then go again…"

He chuckled softly, his nose still buried in the back of her neck "Well, I'm also glad we've got the time today. How was work?"

"Oh, it was alright, nothing too special happened, otherwise the kids would have been sent back already, you know." _Maybe a respite from work wouldn't be so bad… I can deal with those reports later tonight… Hmm, I don't think having him take care of more than five full-time is a good idea because it drains him too much even though they're all good, studious and relatively quiet kids, so given my ovulation cycle… contraceptive charm it is today. Then I can chat with him about work and see if he has any good perspectives to offer this time like he usually does… I wish I'd gotten the Hatchery Form spec instead of my sister, at least then the kids would be clustered in age and easier to deal with… but I can't blame Hermione for wanting to have a career and thus not reproducing that much, especially given she's not fully Hatchery Spec like Mother is. Still, we can't just cull the rabid fundamentalist scum, we need to have enough biological output to outdo them in net fitness._

Sometimes, she wondered what life would have been like for her if she'd chosen to take the hard line back then at the pivotal moments in their relationship… the conclusions she usually drew were at best less than pleasant. After some decent education and removal of his mental blocks Harry had grown up to be a fine life partner, after all… even if he did get a bit jealous sometimes over her spending time planning for the future with another man whose fanfiction works of the Harry Potter series wrote them on diverging paths, a part of his work which thankfully hadn't come true unlike the rest which was mostly alarmingly accurate and his other fictional works online which had come true one after another. Then again, Harmony remembered seeing where she was now as an Omake in the guy's work, so… _Meh, it doesn't matter…_ "Harry, I need to move around." He let go with an amused grunt at that, leaving to tidy up the house some more while she made dinner.

* * *

CHARACTER PROFILE: Harmony Jane Shepard (as of 09/01/1994, includes skill points breakdowns, ratings approximate)

Titles: None  
Age: 14 Years, 1 month (subjectively 14 years, 9 months)  
Height: approx. 198 cm (growth spurt has ended thanks to time travel, but still growing slowly for now, has not capped out yet)  
Mass: about 95 kg or 209 lbs. (appears quite average in figure, though, as it's mostly muscle and she's damned tall)  
Specialty: Janitor (Self-proclaimed)  
Small Arms Skill: 4/20 (Pistols: 1/4, Light Automatic Weapons 1/6, Sniping 1/6, Shotguns 1/4)  
Heavy Weapons Skill: 4/20 (Machine Guns: 1/3, Grenades/Grenade Launchers: 2/5, Mortars: 1/4, Rocket Launchers/Recoilless Rifles 0/4, Missiles: 0/4)  
Demolitions Skill: 5/20 (Vehicular Destruction: 1/4, Breaching Charges: 1/4, Traps: 1/6, Structural Demolition: 2/6)  
Vehicular Capability: 3/20 (Automobiles: 1/4, Armoured Fighting Vehicles: 1/4, Aircraft: 0/8, Watercraft: 1/4)  
Information Technology (Hacking): 5/20 (Malware Offence: 1/5, Malware Defence: 1/5 Data Taps: 2/5, Other IT: 1/5)  
Close Quarters Combat: 4/20 (Knife-Fighting: 1/4, Empty-handed: 1/4, Improvised Weaponry: 1/5, Unusual Environments Combat: 1/7)  
Stealth and Infiltration: 6/20 (Stealth: 2/5, Infiltration: 1/5, Intelligence Reporting: 2/5, Quiet Killing: 1/5)  
Psychic Warfare (not including "magic"): 8/20 (Offence: 2/7, Defence: 4/7, Support: 2/6)  
Sadism: 9/20 (Torture Skill: 2/5, Torture Satisfaction: 3/5, Killing Satisfaction: 2/4, Lack of Empathy/Emotion: 2/6)  
Command Skill: 8/20 (Self-Control Skill: 1/3, Tactical Command Skill: 3/7, Strategic Command Skill: 5/10)

Total Rating: 57/200

Changes since last year: Small Arms -5 (-2/-3/0/0), Grenade Launchers -1, Traps -1, Automobiles -1, Information Technology -4 (-1/-1/-1/-1), CQC -2 (-1/-1/0/0), Stealth & Infiltration -5 (-1/-2/-1/-1), Sadism +4 (+1/+1/+1/+1), Command Skill +2 (0/0/+2)

* * *

A/N: As you can see, losing a hand meant huge hits to most of Harmony's stat ratings.

REVIEW!


	2. Rendezvous At Checkpoint Burrow

A/N: I was a lazy ass and forgot about Ginny and Luna completely when writing _Escape Artists_, so I had to slot them in via a mention in Chapter 17 that they hung out occasionally with the four main protagonists. Sorry about that, but they aren't quite critical even in this year, though they will get mentions. With this book, the time for trundling through life having fun is over, and shit's about to get real. Prepare yourself for more cynicism, for the **Path of the Dread Lord** (no, for _Galactic Civilizations_ players, not THAT, nor does it have anything to do with the Altarian technology from _Twilight of the Arnor_) is long, dark, and lonely, and if there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's just the glow of an oncoming plasma weapon of some sort. As a side note, if you learnt how to bend reality to your will, probably the first thing you'd do, subconsciously or otherwise, is to make yourself look like a model, hence there are very few actually ugly Psi-capable (regardless of race) unless they're actively trying to cultivate that image.

**I'd like to state that in this history the village we call Ottery St. Mary is very close to one named Ottery St. Catchpole.**

* * *

Chapter 2: Rendezvous At Checkpoint Burrow

_Late August, 1994_

Harmony arrived at the Weasleys' by car (read: she was dropped off roughly where the house should be found and looked around for it) the morning after her twin did, to find her sister sitting, very still, at their kitchen table after breakfast was done with. "Hey Hermione! How are you feeling?"

"I don't want to even try to sob from the soreness." Hermione ground out "because then my shoulders would hurt from shaking."

"So how much did you do last night? I forgot to ask."

"A bit over four hundred each of sit-ups, push-ups, and chin-ups , without breaks within each type. I went overboard enough that I lost count, because Mother said she wouldn't let me come if I didn't meet her expectations. I don't think she was quite serious though because she ended up grabbing me off the ground like a sack of potatoes and telling me that it was quite enough and that I'd actually hurt myself if I did more before hauling me off to the showers."

"Huh, I did seven hundred fifty sit-ups and comparable numbers of equivalents for the others, though… yeah I could only do like three hundred one-handed pull-ups and push-ups and had to do a crapload of elbow weights for this damned thing." She waved her right arm around "It's not like during the school year when I take it easy after all." Harmony looked around at the Weasleys, who were all staring at her. "Hey, it's not THAT impressive! I only weigh two hundred and ten pounds of mostly muscle, not all of which is in any of those exercises!" She shucked her summer camo uniform shirt off before Molly could say anything about removal of clothes, showing her underlying vest (known in North America as a tank top or wife-beater), then flexed her left arm, striking a pose.

"THAT was what you were hiding under the robes?" The Weasley Twins were staring. "Maybe you should be a reserve Beater!"

"You could single-handedly whip the opponents if either of us gets hurt!" There were two loud smacks as Mrs. Weasley clapped her hands on the boys' shoulders with an ominous growl at their insensitive pun.

Harmony ignored them "Hermione…" She grabbed her sister's upper arm and gave it a squeeze "You're doing well. Oh, Fred, George, did you know that these vests are called wife-beaters or sometimes just beaters in North America?"

"It's fate!" One of the twins said dramatically and everyone laughed, even Molly smiled at Harmony taking it all in good humour.

"Arm-wrestle Charlie, will ya?" The other one said as the first ran over to the window and called outside "Oy, CHARLIE!"

"WHAT?"

"HERMIONE'S TWIN IS HERE, COME ARM-WRESTLE HER!"

Charlie proved his age and maturity by declining with "YOU DO REALIZE I'D BE AT A SIZE DISADVANTAGE?" He had met Hermione, who was quite a bit taller than he was, already.

"He's right, you know, knowing when to not fight is critical to surviving as a dragon handler." Harmony said, poking her bushy-haired head out the back door and looking at Charlie, nodding "Hello, I assume you are Charlie given Bill is supposed to be tall, and you said you'd be at a noticeable, proportionate that is, size disadvantage in terms of upper and lower arm length, not to mention you're at the right spot for that shout? It's nice to meet you, my name's Harmony Shepard, I'm Hermione older and much tougher twin." She turned back to look at Hermione when her hair fell into her face for the second time during that conversation "I really wish you'd cut your hair already, Hermione, it's tiring dragging this mane around so that I can confuse people at a casual glance."

"Don't you usually wear a hairnet when you're not trying to confuse people?" Her twin said, annoyed.

"Yeah… I didn't bother today, wish you'd cut your hair so I never have to even when I need to figure out a way to fit this abomination under a helmet." Harmony pointed to her own head.

"Helmet? Do you do some sort of dangerous sport?" Charlie asked, having walked closer to the door as Harmony had mostly expected him to.

Harmony turned her head back toward him "Sport? More like hunting. There is no hunting like the hunting of armed and dangerous people, and those who grow to like it… care for nothing else thereafter." She said, only half-jokingly.

He leaned back theatrically "Whoa there, you sound like you're experienced with that."

"You're funny, Charlie." She meant that as in _theatrics are unnecessary since you are RIGHT_. "Well, good luck with whatever you're do… are you de-gnoming the garden?" She suddenly thought of something she needed to practice, yes, it was a skill she'd begun to pick up over the summer as the easiest one-handed small-arms after pistols, this skill was known as sniping.

"Yes, what about it?"

"Excellent, Hermione and I need some target practice. Hermione, I'm assuming you've been instructed in basic pistol usage and maintenance in the last month and have been issued one?"

"Yes, but I'm not allowed to use it without supervision… I'm assuming you count as supervision then?" Hermione stood from her seat with a groan of soreness. "What are we doing?"

"De-gnoming the garden, from Ron's room overlooking it. I'll set up on one side of the window and you can pick off any stragglers from the other side."

"Ron, is it okay if we borrow your room for half an hour? Oh, and tell everyone outside to come back in, we don't want any accidents. There's no chance of Mr. Weasley Apparating into the garden either, right? Can you call Bill inside?"

Molly grimaced "Arthur knows better than to try that after the last time… he was in St. Mungo's for two days after I hurled a saucepan through the window at his head thinking he was a Death Eater, just after Gideon and Fabian…" There was a sudden extremely awkward silence before Molly cleared her throat and said "I'll call Bill in, we'll all come watch your gnome-purging methods if you don't mind."

"Not at all, just make sure no one comes into the garden while we're at it. Upstairs we go, Hermione, this way we'll be tracking targets in two dimensions instead of basically just one if we're firing from the same level as them. We promise to clean up the mess afterward, Mrs. Weasley. We'll be using fully rubber, biodegradable bullets, Hermione, get moving."

"Great… gunnery practice…" Hermione groaned, her arms still quite sore. Still, she pulled herself out of her seat and trudged up the stairs after her sister, who was hauling her large overnight trunk up the stairs. "How long are you going to take to assemble your weapon?" She said once she got there. Harmony opened the trunk to reveal an assembled battle rifle with a bipod instead of a grenade launcher mounted on the Underslung Mounting Rail (UMR). It was more compact than a sniper rifle and thus didn't require breakdown and assembly (assembling a sniper rifle would be a pain with only one hand), while still packing a very good punch and precision at mid range. "Never mind, I sense turkey-shooting coming."

"Gnome-shooting, but close enough. Then we'll practice control over our Reductor curses. I chose _Bombarda_ for my primary offensive spell because it made a decent sized boom without too much need for control, while having enough splash that aim isn't too critical either. _Reducto_ is more surgical and more useful here, because we don't want to crater the Weasley's garden, instead we'll be making fertilizer out of the gnomes." Said family was watching quietly, curiously, as the twins set up at Ron's window. "You guys don't mind us killing the gnomes, right?"

"Not particularly." Ron said, the rest of the family were more curious on how they were going to go about killing them. That was until the cracking of gunfire started and they hurried downstairs to watch as the gnomes foolishly coming out to investigate the sounds were shot down one by one.

* * *

"I did not expect to use this for fertilizer this summer." Molly grumbled as she watched the more violent set of twins currently at the Burrow bury the exploded corpses that littered the garden.

"We were shooting rubber bullets since they were biodegradable, so you won't find metal bullets scattered around your garden." Harmony said as she turned over the dirt to bury the evidence of casting a Reductor—a weaker, more contained _Bombarda_—at each downed gnome.

"Ron was right, Arthur won't be too happy about this… he's always thought they were funny." Molly said, her arms still crossed over her chest while the twins were cleaning up and Harmony was using _Accio_ to summon bullets out of the ground regardless.

"Eh… men, they don't seem to understand that pests will always re-colonize and area so long as the pest is not extinct in surrounding areas, and I don't think gnomes are extinct in Britain. Think of it as free fertilizer for your garden while preventing them from eating any more of your plants. If you find that they controlled other pests naturally, when they re-colonize you can let them be, it's a good experiment."

"Hmm… wait, aren't you not supposed to use Magic over the summer?" Molly suddenly said, having overlooked it for a while since around her house the Twins often did magic, which was a pain in the ass. There was also the fact that she'd been gaping at the callous way Harmony blasted the corpses into smears across the ground.

"In magical households, or anywhere other than registered Muggleborn households, they just assume it's local adult Magicals doing it, so the signature sensors don't bother with signals from these. It's just another of the government's machinations to keep us Muggleborns downtrodden. This property is a Magical household, yes? Given Fred and George haven't been arrested like ten thousand times over yet, we can do magic here."

Molly had turned her head slowly toward the Burrow where she realized she'd left all her kids hanging halfway out the back door gawking at the Twins clearing up the bloody mess and that they'd heard it all. There was also a small bit of Hermione's vomit in the mess after the younger brunette had slipped and fallen on a splattered gnome, which had been cleared off her front by Harmony's _Scourgify_, but that wasn't the point as Molly came to the most horrifying realization of her life after the night her older brothers died. "Aw HELL NO!"

"I have an extremely bad feeling about this." Bill Weasley said from where he was, swallowing hard and looking at the Twins, who bore eviler smirks than ever before, before fully registering his mother's choice of language and whipping around to gape at her.

Molly seemed to have flown off her handle as she stood up close and personal to Harmony "Do you think the house is still going to be standing tomorrow?" She hissed furiously.

Harmony adopted her best holier-than-thou expression and looked down her nose at the much shorter woman "Have faith in your children, Mrs. Weasley, if you have any faith in yourself that you have raised them correctly. I keep enough explosives in my room to blow up my home twice over any day without even bothering with rigging them to main structural elements, but knowing what it can do and understanding the responsibility means I have never so much as had my pistol go off in my room…" She smirked suddenly "Excluding that one time some guy tried to break in through my window, but that's not the point."

Molly huffed, shook her head, and finally sighed with an eye-roll "I'm quite sure what you're talking about was much less stupid than my giving Arthur a concussion with a saucepan due to paranoia just because he got off work early unexpectedly. Well, Fred, George, did you hear her? I'm going to have to trust you won't blow up the house… Merlin help me." She suddenly remembered something "Oh right, you lot should get ready to go with your father to pick Harry up soon!" She shooed the boys back inside while Harmony and Hermione were digging their unfolded collapsible shovels into the dirt again.

"Still don't know why you decided to make me pack these last night, but I suppose they came in useful." Hermione said about the shovels once the others were out of sight, burying the dismembered bottom half of another gnome.

"I'm kind of surprised you only threw up that little." Harmony tried to keep the conversation going with her apparently very subdued twin, flicking her chin toward the small puddle in question.

"That's what happens when you watch footage from all sorts of horrifying situations from recent human history every night to get desensitized. I'm assuming you did it too as part of Mom's idea of psychological conditioning?"

"Yes, and I have chosen my path to challenge fate, to spend my life fighting so that those crimes against sentience are never forgotten, fighting so that one day the downtrodden can raise their heads and stand in the warmth of the sun that each sentient being on this planet is equally entitled to. I will always be fighting… so that others do not have to fight to be free, but also to make sure that they know freedom isn't free…" She trailed off "I shouldn't give you too much of an ideological lecture, it's not good for you."

"…Your goal is noble, Harmony, but I… I don't think I could ever stick to it, the blood and death make me feel ill…" Hermione mumbled quietly.

"Good, then you can go on and have enough kids for both of us, cause I don't plan on reproducing, at least, not within the next… Oh about twenty years at least."

Hermione's shovel jammed itself far deeper into the dirt than necessary "I am not some sort of breeding machine!" She hissed furiously.

Harmony hmpf-ed proudly "Good, and never let anyone else, male, female, hermaphrodite, mono-gendered or whatever, pressure you into thinking you should be too dependent on someone else, or that you HAVE to do things you do not wish to, because FREEDOM!" She thrust her shovel up toward the sky, holding it around the middle with the dirty head end down to not throw much dirt.

"It would be nice if you didn't almost hit me in the head with the shovel you're waving around." Hermione said, having brought hers up barely in time to use the handle end to deflect Harmony's dramatic upward thrust from clipping the side of her ear.

"Sorry, I mirrored my movements, but I don't think I've mirrored the considerations behind them yet…" Harmony grimaced, since if she'd had a right hand to do that gesture with it would more than have been well clear of Hermione. Of course, that was disregarding the fact that she'd actually decided to test her sister's reaction time and would have shifted to miss if she wasn't fast enough.

* * *

After some greetings upon Arthur Weasley returning to his home (including roughly five minutes telling him the basics of the large solar panel Harmony had unfolded in the yard and the satellite dish), Harmony and Hermione were seated around the rather long kitchen table with everyone else. "So how are you planning to get to Number Four, Privet Drive?" Harmony asked primly after the hubbub of Arthur Weasley coming home died down. "There isn't much time left… and did you get permission to use magic at Harry's address?"

"Floo Network, I asked the office if they could help set up a connection, apparently the house had the apparatus already installed since Lily Potter paid for it to be set up, so they just reactivated it. I was thinking we could go some other way, but really, Floo is probably the least likely to cause a disturbance in their neighbourhood." Arthur answered. "Yes, I talked to the Improper Use of Magic office and cleared magic use for this afternoon and evening at Harry's place with them."

"And… you don't think erupting out of someone's fireplace who completely does not expect it is a bad idea?" Harmony ventured.

Arthur demonstrated some of the intelligence that managed to keep his department alive despite decades of pureblood supremacist domination, not unlike consumer support facilities in say the US government despite the monopolies, though both cases were mere mirages of their former selves. "Apparition or Portkey into a Muggle neighbourhood is far more risky. The Knight Bus…" He grimaced "well honestly I don't think any of us would particularly enjoy that. Brooms or any other form of flight are not an option either. As for going somewhere nearby and then proceeding on foot… I daresay that we may not blend in too well, particularly as orange hair is a very rare trait, the Twins didn't take Muggle Studies either, they did Arithmancy, Runes and Creatures, so chances are they'll end up forgetting themselves and becoming curious about a lot of things on the way. So Floo is probably the safest bet, it's not like the flames would hurt us while the Floo Network is engaged."

"That makes sense… so who are you taking to pick Harry up?"

"Well, I was thinking the same group who, er, removed Harry from his relatives' house the summer after First Year." Arthur looked over to Molly, who shrugged, showing she was okay with this.

"That sounds like it would work. You'd have enough numbers to deal with the Dursleys handily if they do anything stupid. I have back-up ready outside that house, watching the situation for today. If things completely go out of control, they will breach the home, neutralize the Dursleys and help you liberate Harry. They won't kill them because of the blood wards around the house needing them to live there, but honestly I don't think Dursley's stupid enough to try anything. My soldiers have been watching them since yesterday, and he should not have any weapons on-hand that you cannot easily defend against. Keep your wands ready to draw, Mr. Weasley, Fred, George, Ron, and you should be fine."

Mr. Weasley had a rather grave frown by this point "You sound like Moody giving a briefing during the last war. Are you sure his relatives are that bad?"

"They might hate magic, but they're more bullies than ideologues. If they were motivated by ideology and would rather die like the more fanatical Death Eaters I would have had them put down and whisked Harry away long ago, but they stopped trying to stamp him down once they realized he could hit back. Bullies can be easily cowed into obedience, and I have cowed them. Harry's protected by the blood wards that Dumbledore must have put there for good reason… I'm going to try to figure out why before taking decisive action to remove Harry permanently from that place."

Molly had a small smirk as Harmony finished "Ginny's going to be disappointed I suppose." She looked over at her daughter, who just shrugged as if she'd bought this as reality a long time ago—which she had.

Harmony's left cheek twitched _WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK I HAVE A THING FOR HIM?_ She thought, then said "The implications of that sentence disturb me. Ginny, I want you to know that you have my full backing—"

"Honestly, Harmony, I'm not obsessed enough to not realize that you're way closer to him than I am." Ginny cut her off. "You've stuck by his side since he came to Hogwarts, I only started spending time occasionally with you guys this year. You've stood with him through most of you guys' big adventures too… all I've been is a damsel in distress last year!"

Meanwhile, Hermione was addressing the males at the table "Anyone else here feel like a fourth or higher-numbered wheel?" They all snorted or chuckled at this.

Harmony pinched the bridge of her nose, saying "Sooner or later Harry will realize that I'm not his type, and I was thinking that if you'd take the time to get to know him you might not mind being with him someday after you both grow up. I have many other things to do with my life before I can even consider settling down, and those things are ones that I have to do alone. However, you are right in one aspect of telling me this… I never asked you to not date anyone else! If you find someone else who you want to date, I will support you above Harry! I think that's what this is about isn't it? I'll have you know that I DESPISE people who try to make potential reproductive decisions for others, I'm merely asking you as a friend, and as Harry's friend, if you haven't found anyone by the time he decides I'm too dangerous to be near, to _consider_ him. I'm deciding for myself that I want to stay free, so when he finally becomes fed up with my moral compass I'd like to at least make sure he didn't plough all his time into me for nothing and at least has a chance with another friend, if you find him suitable at that time."

"She's got a point, Ginny." Molly said quietly.

Her daughter nodded "I know, Mom. Very well, Harmony, I'll keep that in mind, if I'm not with anyone else, if Harry asks me out, I'll consider it. No guarantees though."

"That's all I'm asking for, someone needs to give the boy a chance. He's been deprived of close companionship for long enough as is… Men need a set of women in their life: mother, mentor-slash-big-sister, then a little-sister-type to help shed their macho-ness and make them tolerable if the big sister didn't crush it out of them, and finally someone to spend their life with, who shares their interests and are similar enough to work but different enough not to be boring." Harmony continued from her original two sentences seeing the eyebrow-raise on Ginny's part.

"He wants a quiet life, I can see that much from the time I spent with you guys talking… he has an interest in Quidditch, hates Dark Wizards, and is very black and white in his moral views that's about it… huh I suppose we don't match too poorly in that regard, though I have a couple shades of grey… then again you have a thousand and one shades of grey…" Ginny mused. "Oh, and honestly, Harmony, I could never see you living a quiet life."

"Yep, I'll be up there with the movers and shakers of the world instead. Well, just give Harry a chance if the time comes and you've nothing, or no one, better to do." Ginny blushed as Harmony waggled her eyebrows and patted the much shorter girl on the head.

Mr. Weasley raised a hand to cut his frowning wife off before she could lecture Harmony "Molly, the kids are growing up, let's just hope that they're responsible about it and that we taught them right." His wife sighed beneath the hand she put over her face, acquiescing. The Weasley boys looked at their father in mild awe at this.

Molly, once sure the exchange was done for now, removed her facepalm at Harmony's suggestive wording and put in "However there is one thing you're wrong on. There's nothing too dangerous about you, Harmony. Even Lily killed many people back in the last war, and if you're saying Harry thinks he's too good for you, then he thinks he's too good for his mother, and I will not have my daughter marrying a boy like that!" Molly's eyes were glaring hard into nothingness and her lips were curled back in a snarl by the end of that.

"Is there something you're not telling me, Mom?" Ginny frowned, wondering why her usually morally uptight mother was so angry over the rejection of killing Death Eaters.

Molly frowned "I suppose… since you're all old enough and have seen dangers even I or your father have not, that you should know… It took five Death Eaters to take my older brothers, your uncles Gideon and Fabian, down, even though they were two of the people then against using lethal force and thus didn't just _Reducto_ or _Bombarda_ the rabid beasts into oblivion. Only Dolohov was captured and sent to Azkaban, the other four… well the Aurors only ever found bits and pieces of them when they arrived at the hideout where those four were. No one walked away from the First Wizarding War with their hands completely clean once we started unofficially adopting Lily's methods to fight back. It was mostly us younger people who did, but really, we were probably the most motivated to protect our families, so…" She trailed off. Her children and Hermione all looked astonished, while Harmony had a look of approval and Arthur nodded grimly, confirming her words. "No, I did not actually shut myself in my room for two days the week after your uncles' deaths. After a week of nightmares in which you all died over and over I cracked and decided to use what information we had to go hunting. The arrogant fools hadn't put up enough protective spells, and since they were the only ones there…" She shrugged. "However, don't think that means I'll let all sorts of uncouthness slide, got it boys?" Her sons all nodded quickly before silence settled again.

"I suddenly feel that Harmony's company may be safer than I previously thought." Ron said to break up the sudden awkward silence.

The brunette in question chuckled "That hurts my feelings, Ron."

He shrugged "The truth hurts, I suppose, would you prefer I kept quiet that I was scared of you for most of June this year before I calmed down?" He didn't mention that the fear was only after her last bloody stunt. Then again, it wasn't unreasonable for a male to be scared of castration, un-anesthetised or otherwise. "Hey Dad, isn't it time to go already?"

Arthur Weasley pulled his head out of memories and realized upon looking at his watch that… "Hmm… oh! We're late!"

It was five minutes past five… and a few moments later the Floo Network ejected the first to try, Mr. Weasley, back onto the floor of The Burrow, blinking in surprise. "Uh oh…"

* * *

A/N: Nobody gets away free making a young mother have that sort of nightmares for a week after killing her two big brothers, nope. Besides, we know Molly is able to kill people, so… I'm just saying she started a bit earlier, learning from Lily's methods, which were learned from Harry's grandfather who came back partly disabled from the Third World War.

* * *

Roughly twenty minutes later, Arthur came back through the Floo with a glower on his face "Alright, finally got them to actually get around to reactivating the connection to Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey like they said they would do today… ugh, bureaucracy… You got the address, boys?" They recited it "Good. Let's go."

"We'll keep an eye on things with this satellite feed I have." Harmony called, starting up her laptop "It'll tell us what's happening in the Dursley's living room, just like a television tells you what's happening either in the studio or somewhere else in the world, but this is a live feed, which means the information is just sent directly, without going through too much processing first. We can talk about the details later. Go!"

"Right, right…" Arthur said, grabbing some Floo Powder before hearing what the feed was saying. "Hmpf, as if I would want to have dinner with people like that." He threw the powder into the flames and shouted "Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey!" Then he stepped in and the wormhole system whisked him away. Fred followed a moment later.

The live feed erupted with banging and scraping noises. Since the main camera had been positioned in a corner of the wall with the fireplace, Harmony switched to an auxiliary feed (in the opposite corner of the room) before George burst out laughing at the boarded-up fireplace. "Oh I've gotta try that." He activated the Floo and jumped in before his mother could stop him.

"…OOF! George, no, there's no room, go back quickly and tell Ron—" Arthur Weasley's vocie came from the speakers of the computer.

"Maybe Harry can hear us, Dad… maybe he'll be able to let us out… or Harmony's people can come and take care of this!" George suggested, before laughing some more.

"Harry? Harry, can you hear us?" Mr. Weasley hammered on the board some more.

"What is this? What's going on?" Vernon Dursley growled, piggy eyes darting between the fireplace and the windows as if expecting SI Spec Ops soldiers to come bursting in at any time.

"They… they've tried to get here by Floo powder," Harry was shaking with quiet laughter "They can travel by fire… only you've blocked the fireplace… hang on…" He walked up to the fireplace. "Mr. Weasley? Can you hear me?" The hammering stopped abruptly "Mr. Weasley, it's Harry . . . the fireplace has been blocked up. You won't be able to get through there… ugh I knew there was something I forgot to talk to Harmony about when she came by yesterday…"

"I forgot that detail, I noticed, but I didn't take enough note of it since I didn't expect them to use the Floo, sorry." Harmony said quietly.

Molly chuckled and shook her head "It's fine, and funny too in this case."

"…got an electric fire." Harry was answering Mr. Weasley's question about why they would want to block up the fireplace. Harmony suddenly thought of something.

"Do you think that Petunia hated her sister enough that she boarded up the fireplace in case wizards could travel through unprepared fireplaces?" She asked suddenly. The Weasleys around her all looked very annoyed by the idea of hating a sibling so much, if the frowns crowded around her were anything to go by.

"Electric fire? Doesn't fire consume fuel? How do you make an electric FIRE? It can heat things, but a legitimate fire needs fuel… unless it's just simulating hot embers?" Mr. Weasley wondered loudly "Let's think… hmm, only way… stand back, Harry!"

"Wait a moment!" Vernon had stepped forward and started shouting at the fireplace "What exactly are you going to—"

"_Depulso_!" The boards of the fireplace were Banished outward and the electric fire tumbled across the floor. Since the embers were a lighting effect instead of actual heating elements, it didn't set the carpet on fire or even scorch it too badly.

"Well, I guess I'm going through now." Ron said, tapping Harmony's shoulder for confirmation. She nodded back, and so he threw some Floo Powder in the fireplace and went through the wormhole network.

"That's better, good that you waited Ron, it would have been crowded." Mr. Weasley sighed, brushing dust from his green robes and straightening his glasses. "Ah… you must be Harry's aunt and uncle!" He stepped forward toward Vernon Dursley, hand extended, but the obese man, now well-decorated with white dust, backed away several paces, dragging Petunia Dursley.

Mr. Weasley decided that maybe apologizing about the damage first was better. "Er… yes… sorry about that. It's all my fault. It just didn't occur to any of us that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see… just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking…" He was telling a little white lie since the Dursley's seemed to be the type who'd remodel their house and demolish the fireplace out of fear if he told the truth. "But I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate." The Dursleys were still gaping like brain-dead dodos as Mr. Weasley greeted Harry. "Hello, Harry! Got your trunk ready?"

"It's upstairs." Harry grinned back.

"We'll get it." Fred—well, probably Fred, the dust wasn't helping the fine details that distinguished the two to Harmony's eyes—said, leaving the room with George immediately thereafter.

"Well… Very… erm… very nice place you've got here." Mr. Weasley said, trying to break the oppressive silence. The Dursleys seemed too scared to say anything. "These all run off electricity? Ah, yes, I can see the plugs… I collect them, there are so many different shapes and sizes from different countries… and battery casings too. My wife thinks I'm mad, but there you are…" He shrugged.

Vernon, showing that he agreed with Mrs. Weasley's assessment, shifted slightly to screen Petunia from view as if he thought Mr. Weasley might suddenly attack them. There was the clunking of the trunk on the stairs, and Harmony abruptly felt Dudley deserved to be a collateral damage statistic for leaving the safe zone of the kitchen just due to a little noise at his age. Unfortunately, Fate didn't tend to do things people deserved. Dudley edged along the wall, staring at Mr. Weasley, before trying to hide behind his parents. Vernon might be obese, but he was nowhere near enough to hide Dudley.

"Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?" Mr. Weasley said, trying again to make conversation instead of the equal frigidity Harmony would have adopted in response to their stonewalling.

"Yep, that's Dudley." Harry glanced over at Ron, who seemed about to burst out laughing at Dudley's clutching his unsightly rear end as if he feared it would fall off.

Mr. Weasley tried to be sympathetic toward the apparently mentally ill boy. "Having a good holiday, Dudley?"

"I am super glad I don't have big boobs, because the way his fat is oozing between his hands as he tightens them in terror is making me sick." Harmony said, drawing annoyed grunts from her younger sister and the matriarch of the household, both of whom were _much_ curvier than the muscular soldier-girl. Ginny also shot her an annoyed look since she was beginning to grow up too. The men in the room all made faces from the fan disservice she'd just smacked in their faces.

"How about you stop the comments before you turn us gay or something?" Bill Weasley suggested after he finished fake-retching. Harmony laughed quietly in response, but said nothing, though she noticed Molly and Ginny both doing half a facepalm (left hand over left eye and forehead) in eerily similar fashion. Then again, daughters did learn from their mothers…

Meanwhile on screen, Fred and George had come back into the room with Harry's trunk, looking around as they entered and spotting the enormous bulk of Dudley. Both of them gained maddened, maniacal grins in the next instant. "Ah, right. Better get cracking then…" Mr. Weasley's wand came out and the Dursleys pushed themselves against the wall not too unlike people in a gas chamber trying to climb over one another against the walls to escape the pool of lethality accumulating on the ground, except in this case both Dursley men were too fat to do so and Petunia couldn't climb out of the lard fast enough to get over them "_Incendio_!" Flames rose in the fireplace, crackling merrily. Harmony noticed that the wood Mr. Weasley had conjured as fuel for the fire looked suspiciously similar in texture and shape to the chair leg he was near, the closest wood his mind could locate to replicate, which was how conjuration worked according to the labs working on understanding it these days. He took a small drawstring bag from his pocket and used some Floo Powder to act as catalyst/reagent for the wormhole transit, causing the flames to turn green to signify it was ready. "Off you go then, Fred."

"Coming! Oh no… hang on…" Fred had dropped a bag of candy and it spilled across the floor. He quickly gathered them back up.

"I think Dudley's about to get a long-overdue lesson to not eat candy from strangers and that he isn't entitled to anythign he can lay his greedy paws on." Harmony said haughtily, tapping the screen to show on toffee he'd missed. Molly's face looked rather fixed, somewhere between grim satisfaction and extreme disapproval, while all the others were smirking broadly. Even Hermione had a expression that suggested she wanted to see the bully get punished.

"The Burrow!" Fred called before the activated Floo Powder (what turned the flames green) was consumed in enabling the actual wormhole transit.

"Right then, George, you and the trunk." Mr. Weasley said, Harry helping George move the trunk into the cloud of activated Floo Powder before he too departed. Ron went next, then Harry turned around while Dudley was sidling toward the toffee Fred had left behind.

"Well, bye then." Harry said. They said nothing, and Arthur put his hand on Harry's shoulder before he could approach the fire to add Floo Powder to activate it.

"Harry said good-bye to you. Didn't you hear him?" The hard tone in Mr. Weasley's voice was akin to a growl.

"It doesn't matter… Honestly, I don't care." Harry muttered, trying to prevent a confrontation.

Mr. Weasley didn't let him make excuses for the Dursleys. "You aren't going to see your nephew till next summer. Surely you're going to say good-bye?"

"Honestly… maybe Dad should fix their living room before lecturing them on being considerate." Charlie said, snickering as he saw Dudley unwrapping the toffee and popping it into his fat mouth.

"Oh… oh GOD… serves you right, PIG!" Harmony cheered with the rest of the boys as the bully got his comeuppance as his tongue grew out of his mouth to monstrous proportions. She idly wondered how his circulatory system could support it or how it even worked, most likely via Psi-illusion? Petunia panicked, grabbing onto it and trying to pull it out and Harmony wondered if she should just shoot the bitch and do humanity's average IQ a favour since tongue removal was more often than not lethal due to blood loss. Vernon had gone completely berserk, and Mr. Weasley advancing with his wand, shouting for calm, made them panic harder. The redhead had to duck under a thrown china figurine before he started to get angry at the rabid walrus. Harmony's jaw set at the thrown projectile "I think I should go, it'll be faster. It should only take one shot."

"Harry, go! Just go! I'll sort this out!" Mr. Weasley was yelling over the speakers before Harmony cast some Floo Powder into the Weasleys' fire and stepped through the wormhole system, pulling her pistol out as she exited and firing a shot that shattered the second thrown figurine before its shards struck her and she screened her face with her right forearm, the bits of ceramic bouncing off her inherited reinforced skin.

The house had suddenly gone much quieter at the sight of the pistol levelled at Vernon Dursely's chest "Let Mr. Weasley fix Dudley's tongue, and then we'll be out of here after he repairs your hearth. Remember, a large board falling flat makes a similar enough sound to a gunshot you can pass off this one instance. This is your one and final warning." She said, quiet but clear, even Dudley seemed to have paused gagging in fright.

"Hey Harmony, sorry for the extra trouble." Harry said, grinning.

"It was no trouble, these animals seem to forget that we are watching them in exchange for letting them stay alive." She said, smiling at him and holstering her gun before turning to Mr. Weasley "Fix it before he suffocates, please. Hey, Dudley, you've learned to not eat candy from strangers now, right?" The fatty's head bobbed up and down as much as he could with that huge tongue dragging him down. "Harry, let's go. Remember, Dursleys, my men ARE watching, and ready, if you try anything toward Mr. Weasley after we leave…" She shrugged, before draping her unhanded arm around Harry's shoulders and looking down at the much shorter boy "You mind doing the Floo Powder? If George and your trunk can go through at once, no reason you and I can't, right?"

"Of course." With a bit of powder and a shouted address, they were off.

* * *

**A/N**: I just started reading the High School DxD manga, and I gotta say, maybe Harmony will decide to visit that universe sometime after her ascension to a psionic entity. "Red and black haired main females for the current generation, with a brunette guy much younger than either screwing both, evil church assholes who get away with slaps on the wrist and have to be put down… Ah feels just like back home… except this universe has several primary patterns of psionic energy and way more fellow major psionic entities, and these guys aren't my family…"

Review Replies (For Ch 17 of Escape Artists AND Ch 1 of Blood Sport)!

**Blastbone**: Nice to see reviews from new people. Most likely Harmony's gonna use Umbridge as both bait (fish out the enemy) and flint (spark revolution).

**T. H. Enesley**: Your opinion has been noted. I thought it was pretty average paced for a conversation between two friends, though I do agree I worked too hard on deconstructing Dursley normalcy. What is the point of anything anyhow? Inevitably, with the heat death of the universe, nothing ever matters. I don't care, I'm still gonna write so long as it remains even slightly amusing for me to do so.

**Miner249er**: Why thank you… what did you think of the omake that **you requested but DID NOT REVIEW**?

**Kaery91**: Thanks, nothing to say about last chapter's expansion of the identity-knowing list or Omake? I'm a bit surprised.

REVIEW!


	3. Before The World Cup

**A/N**: What is Harmony, you ask? If you ask her, you will get "I am the hand that reaps the exploiters in the field… I am the fist that punishes the Arrogance of Men."

Filler chapter, more or less, also goes toward showing Harmony isn't perfect.

* * *

Chapter 3: Before The World Cup

_The Burrow, Late August, 1994_

"So, what was that, exactly?" Harry asked as soon as they exited, managing not to be thrown out of the fire this time because of being caught and… "Harmony, you can stop the theatrics now. I don't know what this is called, but I'm pretty sure it's some sort of leaning-slash-swooping thing from ballet. I know we exited spinning a bit, but really…" He shuddered in laughter at her smirk from pulling the move off effectively.

"When'd you learn that? Only I did lessons in dance… while you were running around shooting things." Hermione was frowning as Harmony tried to push herself back upright from the deep dip she'd let Harry fall into… and realized she was a bit too far off-balance since Harry had grown a bit since the last time she'd picked him up, so he balanced differently from what she had calculated the manoeuvres with, combined with her counterbalancing arm being a bit shorter than she was used to—_ugh everyday life is easy to adjust to but these detail-intensive on-the-brink manoeuvres are such a pain in the ass…_ It would be difficult to get back up without falling… so she did what any competent, sufficiently self-assured person would do…

"Um, a bit of help anyone? Ah, thanks Ginny." The younger redhead had helped push Harmony's shoulders back and lift Harry's at the same time, shaking her head at their antics. Meanwhile, Fred and George were still busy laughing until Harmony leaned her elbows on their shoulders without elevating her arms above level with her shoulders and asked them "So what was it?"

"Ton-Tongue Toffee. George and I invented them, and we've been looking for someone to test them on all summer…" Fred said proudly.

"Not the Joke Shop thing again…" Molly rubbed her face tiredly, almost resignedly. Her brothers had wanted to open one someday after the Voldemort War was over with, so she didn't quite have the heart to tell her sons that they couldn't keep treading the steps of their uncles. She had however confiscated all their stuff as punishment for doing so poorly on their OWLs. Even Fab and Gid didn't flunk their exams that hard… She had been contacted by several professors questioning whether the twins had failed so many OWLs on purpose and telling her that they were still signed up for NEWT classes in those subjects where the teachers felt they were adequate.

It wasn't completely out of nicety or favouritism though. To quote McGonagall in her letter, which had included the questions of the other professors, "Most of the staff agree, whether out of humour (Filius) or honest opinion (Severus), if we didn't put them in a decently full schedule of classes, I doubt the castle would still be standing by this time next year, even though we can't exactly expel them since there's no malice in whatever they do. At least the boys do put forth some effort in the classroom and it would tie up their time".

Molly remembered her manners "Hello Harry, welcome to the Burrow." A round of greetings were exchanged after that.

There was a pop and Mr. Weasley appeared in the living room only to find a pistol raising toward him before Harmony relaxed and re-holstered her weapon with another double-click of safety and then locking. "Thank you for not doing anything rash at the surprising entry… Now, Fred, George, we need to talk… what did you give to that boy?"

"I didn't give him anything," Fred said with a defiant grin "I just _dropped _it… It was his fault he went and ate it, I never told him to."

"You dropped it on purpose! You knew he'd eat it, you knew he was on a diet!" Mr. Weasley shouted.

"How big did his tongue get?" George asked, eyes gleaming in anticipation.

"It was four feet long before his parents would let me shrink it!" The room burst into laughter again. "It _isn't funny_! That sort of behaviour seriously undermines wizard–Muggle relations! I spend half my life campaigning against the mistreatment of Muggles, and my own sons…"

Fred jumped up from where he sat at the incorrect accusation "We didn't give it to him because he's a Muggle!"

George stood with his twin "No, we gave it to him because he's a great bullying git. Isn't he, Harry?"

"Yeah, he is, Mr. Weasley." Harry agreed.

Mr. Weasley sighed "That's not the point, the point was that you used magical means to harm a Muggle! Even if he deserved his comeuppance you could have used non-magical means to not accumulate more animosity between Magicals and Muggles!"

Harmony clapped her hands (well, hand and wrist) on the Twins' shoulders "Geez, boys, if you had needed Muggle laxatives or something all you'd have had to do was talk to me…" Her voice turned serious "Would you have done it if you knew he could get you back?"

Fred nodded, his prankster mind instantly understanding where she was going and knowing he should be proud of what he believed in "Yes, he deserved what he got and we're not afraid of people getting back at us, in fact as long as it's not too painful we'll probably share a laugh… Hey, George, it seems someone hasn't heard of the time we had our briefs stuck up-side-down over our heads for a week back in Second Year in retribution for charming Lee's clothes so they'd unwind all the seams an hour after he put them on and to reassemble after falling off him… we became best friends after that from where we were just normal friends, though if we'd known the consequences maybe we wouldn't have forgiven him."

"You do realize she came to Hogwarts in our Third Year?" George said, making his twin facepalm before he explained "It's the reason we still haven't got a single date yet at school whenever we try with any other house, because they all thought they were panties even though they were pretty unisex in style. Fortunately the Gryffindor girls have forgiven us after we proved ourselves the last time Angelina and Alicia got back at us for fooling around too much… when they moved our wardrobe to the Common Room somehow, the label on the front included, while we were out, so everyone knew it actually WAS our stuff. Oh, right, Fred, they still haven't told us how they got it down the stairs or through a window since it's supposed to be mostly spell-proofed… remind me to ask them about that again on the train." He looked at Harmony and explained "We asked them every year after the incident, still no answers though."

"Interesting…" _But ultimately irrelevant to my current mission, but there was something about a joke shop? That might come in useful sometime…_ "So what's this about a joke shop?"

"Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, they derived the name from an old journal of my brothers that I probably shouldn't have showed them." Molly had a rueful grin that turned into a scowl, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at the two smug-looking redheaded boys "If I'd known they'd spend their time doing that and failing exams on purpose so they could have more free time… ugh. Well, at least the professors let you into a number of NEWT classes based on regular in-class performance instead of your OWL scores."

"…And because they're worried we'll blow up the castle if left alone." George supplied cheekily.

Molly rolled her eyes "…I really should have given you a different volume of their journals."

Fred shrugged "At least we know that Uncles Fabian and Gideon were right in that the teachers would use their usual class performance as reasons to put them in NEWT classes to tie up their time even if they failed their OWLs."

Molly growled in annoyance at the confession before saying "I'll give your catalogue back once you get your NEWTs, really, you'll need it to follow your uncles' dream anyhow. It would be nice if you'd work at the Ministry like your father or Percy, but I can't blame you for having the same dreams Fab and Gid had…" She shook her head, sighing "No idea what I was thinking when I named you two after them, it's like I WANTED to be bitten by Fate one day… You kids should show Harry the arrangements of the house for tonight while I start working on dinner."

"What's Mr. Weasley doing to do while you're working on that?" Hermione asked out of curiosity, since at her home usually her father cooked the meals, since both she and her sister preferred her father's culinary skills to the edible but bland material their mother tended to make.

"I have to go back to work, deal with some back-logged paperwork before I can get time off to attend the World Cup." Arthur Weasley said. "See you all at dinner, I need to get moving… only told Perkins I'd be gone for an hour before heading back to help him clear out the last of the stuff…" And then he was off.

* * *

"Well at least Percy hasn't turned into a corrupt asshole yet." Harmony said as they continued advancing upward, pointing out sleeping arrangements as they went. Then they got to Ron's room and Harry was introduced to Pig.

Ron then revealed that Percy got to keep his room to himself, even though the current sleeping arrangements were crowded, since he had work he brought home to do. Harry's opinion was "Mate, you don't snore that loud, and if he can't handle someone sleeping in the same room as him… why did he date that Clearwater girl back in Hogwarts? And how is he surviving working in a noisy Ministry cubicle?"

Harmony was baring her teeth in disgust "Parental favouritism… ugh, hate it… and before you even say it Hermione if you'd figured out Mother's real job on your own we'd have given you training if you wanted it, as I've told you before."

"Did you even know what you were getting into when you first took up the training?" Hermione questioned. "That wasn't favouritism, that was the opposite, you've practically been abused!"

"More or less, if it meant keeping you safe and me more or less alive I was willing to do anything. It is my duty as eldest, so I didn't care if it was or was not favouritism." Harmony replied as per her creed, and Hermione rolled her eyes as she had when they had this conversation the previous times.

Meanwhile, Ron was still talking to Harry "Honestly though I don't blame Mom and Dad for keeping at least Pig out of Percy's room. They could have put Bill in there and Charlie in Fred and George's room though… but I suppose it's so rare to have us all home that they wanted Bill and Charlie to have some extra space, so the twins are squeezed in here with us…"

"Wait… where's Crookshanks? And your owl, Harmony?"

"Crooks is in the garden, I expect, chasing down any surviving gnomes for fun since he's never seen them before." Hermione answered.

"Flare's out hunting, I don't use her much for mail so we haven't bonded as much as you guys and your pets. She does like to roost on my head occasionally though."

"Hmm… Percy seems to enjoy his work too much." Harry mused.

"Enjoy? I don't reckon he'd come home if Dad didn't make him. He's obsessed. Just don't get him onto the subject of his boss. _According to Mr. Crouch… as I was saying to Mr. Crouch… Mr. Crouch is of the opinion… Mr. Crouch was telling me…_ They'll be announcing their engagement any day now." Ron growled.

"They said back in the day that God gave the Germans three things, intelligence, honesty, and Nazism, but they could only have two of the three… In an analogous situation, Percy seems to have the latter two."

Hermione talked over her sister's idle musings "How was your summer, Harry? Did the food parcels help?"

He nodded "Yeah, they saved my life, those cakes."

"And have you heard from—" Ron shut himself up a moment before Hermione glared at him. Ginny had been partly let in on the story, but Fred and George were still in the dark. Ron had thought Black being Padfoot would be good in at least making the two listen… and then thought better of it. _Harmony could probably only catch one of them before they ran off to tell Mom and Dad if they truly thought I had gotten into something dangerous… and I don't think Hermione's trained enough to react as fast as these pranksters would run off, especially as they're the ones closest to the door. Without hard evidence on-hand the best we could do is persuade Mom and Dad to wait for evidence, but I don't fancy being grounded for the next four years or so…_ Ron did not know that Harmony had had the torture of Pettigrew recorded by her future self (as for why she recorded it, she remembered getting the recording and thus had to fulfill time). Even had he known, he would have known it couldn't be used as evidence, just as even telling his parents about the entirety of the confrontation with Pettigrew was not an option, given the contents would probably result in his father at least asking Harmony to leave if not trying to arrest her with unpleasant consequences. Knowing her there was absolutely zero chance she'd let herself get arrested for damaging a criminal, particularly with the rotten state of the Ministry these days. Sometimes he wondered why his mother wanted Fred and George to go into the Ministry, perhaps it was to try to improve the family's influence so that they'd be better able to stand against the Dark families' advances?

"Lupin's fine." Harmony diverted "He's being well-paid for the safe experiments. We won't do anything that's dangerous unless we capture rogue werewolves to experiment on, and he's been working with us on hunting down some rogues that have been attacking people. We're putting those ones down. So far it looks like lycanthropy is a highly modified version of the rabies virus in its targeting of brain tissue, but it needs a critical load before it even produces any more viruses within the brain to fully complete the infection according to our experiments with neurons from donated brain tissue. After brain infection is mostly complete it produces secondary types of viruses that promote growth or modification in other tissues, such as improving muscle density slightly and boosting metabolism by changing blood protein composition slightly. These include a type that secondarily infiltrate the eyes and produces some additional cells on the iris to determine lunar cycles using a specific emission spectrum similar to that of typical space rocks and the Moon, hence the yellow tint of werewolf eyes in human form. The transformation schedules and transmission mechanisms don't make sense though unless it was originally a biological terror weapon… it's possible that whatever society Ancestor Kane came from did have it as such a weapon. Research indicates that the primary infectious viral form's production is entirely in the wolf form's special venom glands, but injection of the viral serum only happens under somewhat conscious control and after the injection of a sedative—it turned out to be another gland that mixes with saliva instead of just normal saliva—to reduce prey struggling. Unfortunately the more psychotic ones don't bother with the sedative and in come cases don't even inject since they're under enough conscious control of their aggression to just attack for fun. We're going to get a few of those ones and do biopsies of their tissues to better determine how to cure the condition or at least prevent further horizontal transmission. Since vertical transmission does not occur, the condition can be purged within a generation if there is no more horizontal transmission."

Ron was blinking owlishly "…I didn't understand much beyond the werewolf being a version of rabies, being able to sense the full moon coming via changing the iris of the eye, and sedating before infecting."

"That's about what I got too." Harry said. "And that Professor Lupin's being taken care of and paid well for helping the researchers… and that your people are hunting for insane werewolves to take them down and do horrible experiments on them."

Harmony nodded "We discovered that silver ions are poisonous to werewolves in terms of how their blood reacts with it, their pain receptors in their skin have extremely high sensitivity to silver ions as a result, to keep them safe. We'll be testing the effects on different tissues once we get rogue werewolves and can do biopsies, since all Lupin's giving us are blood, saliva, urine, sweat and stool samples."

"Well shit." Ron said with a straight face, making Harmony roll her eyes.

"Before we get into even worse puns, maybe we should go see if your parents need help with dinner?" Hermione suggested.

"Yeah, sounds good to me." Ron said. The four of them left with Ginny, Fred and George in tow, though the last two quickly fell behind and Ginny slowed down to listen.

"We are not going to prank Harmony, ever, right?" Fred said.

His twin looked over at him as if he was insane "I'm not suicidal yet."

"You two do realize she might actually ask you guys to prank her posse at some point for some reason or another, right?" Ginny said "Other than that, unless it's actually dangerous to someone's survival, especially Harry or Hermione, she's not that into retaliation. Come on, unless you want another lecture from Mom over putting off the joke shop for now, let's go help set the tables in the garden."

* * *

**A/N**: I will not have Mrs. Weasley conjure anything edible, since JK Rowling changed her mind in the last book and made it impossible to conjure food (here conjuration is basically the same as nanolathing from my other major series so complex things like decent food is absurdly hard), thus she won't be conjuring any sauce.

* * *

Meanwhile, down in the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley was preparing some potatoes, while talking to Harry, Ron, Harmony and Hermione to vent her irritation a bit. "It's not like they haven't got brains, their course selections and not flunking out of those courses say enough, but they're wasting them. Unless they pull themselves together soon and take their exams more seriously like Fab and Gid did, they could be in real trouble if the joke shop idea doesn't do too well. I've had more owls from Hogwarts about them than the rest put together. If they carry on the way they're going, they'll end up in front of the Improper Use of Magic Office." She had picked up her wand after pulling out some more saucepans… and it emitted a loud squeak before turning into a giant rubber mouse. "Ugh…" She emitted a wordless groan before casting it aside and grabbing her real wand, this time by sight since it had looked different from the fake, which was a generic stereotyped wand of a different colour and surface pattern. "How many times have I told them not to leave them lying around?"

"Let's go help Bill and Charlie." Ron suggested, grabbing cutlery from the open drawer and leaving via the nearest exit, the front door. They were just out the door when they were accosted by Hermione's huge ginger cat.

"Hey Crookshanks." Harry greeted.

"Mrrow…" The cat replied, winding itself around Harry's legs a couple times.

"Are there no more gnomes to chase?" Harmony questioned, surprised. Crookshanks' ears drooped and he hissed in irritation as his reply "Guess we were a bit too thorough on de-gnoming the garden for the Weasleys." There was a loud bang of wood impacting wood from the back yard and Harmony had her pistol out with a double-click a second after hearing it, settling into a half-crouch while Hermione was less crouched, though the younger twin had both wand and pistol out reflexively in only slightly worse time. "Wands out, I'll check at the corner, if something happens to me start firing off anything you can think of that's short and rapid fire. If I relax and wave you guys up, then all is good…" She noted that both Harry and Ron had half-decent draw times, then stalked over, flipping the camcorder-esque screen mounted on her pistol's scope rail up, and turned it so she could look around the corner before rolling her eyes and straightening up "It's safe, guys, weapons away."

Two battered old tables were being levitated by Bill and Charlie respectively duelling in mid-air, each trying to inflict critical damage on the other. Fred, George and Ginny had arrived before the four of them and were spectating. Ginny noticed them first and waved as Bill's table caught Charlie's with a loud bang after doing a snap roll, snapping one of the target's legs off. A clatter from overhead had Percy opening his window to yell "Will you keep it down?!"

"Sorry, Perce. How're the cauldron bottoms coming on?" Bill was grinning.

"Very badly!" Percy said irritably before slamming the window shut. His older brothers chuckled as they set the tables down on the grass, end to end, and fixed the table leg, and with a wave of his wand Bill directed the tablecloths lying folded up on the grass onto the tables.

* * *

At dinner, Harmony listened to the conversations at the table and frowned at Mr. Weasley talking about smoothing things over for the brother of the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports when he had a charmed lawnmower. She frowned at Percy, a stickler for rules, overlooking this corruption as routine. Then again she supposed it was normal for a bureaucracy to have some level of favours being exchanged, and at least a charmed lawnmower was probably something relatively minor… After he and Percy finished up their conversation for now, she walked over to put her face between them and ask quietly "Did Otto Bagman get a warning?"

Arthur Weasley looked disgusted—and a surface scan of his relaxed mind said it was honest—at the idea of going so far as to let something go completely "I'm no Malfoy, of course he did, but I did make sure it didn't affect him too badly otherwise, all he'd done was make the lawnmower able to mow the lawn on its own at regular intervals as well as evading any living thing larger than a mouse. Honestly that's a lot more benign than ninety percent of the cases I have to deal with and the only reason someone reported him was probably to try to get at his brother."

"Good, I'll take your word for it for now. Percy, what is Bertha Jorkins' blood status?"

"Pureblood I think… why?"

She leaned even closer between the two men and lowered her voice "Someone so useless in the Ministry would have been fired long before if they weren't pureblood, you know this to be true, Percy. Also, don't bait your brothers with this so-called 'Big Event', unless you want Fred and George to die for the disgusting blood sport you are trying to revive from medieval times. Yes, Percy, I have my sources and know what's going to happen this year. They were way too young in eighty-one to understand what war and by connection death truly means. Please, stop before anyone gets killed." She straightened up before chipping into Ginny, Molly and Bill's conversation over the eldest boy's hair length now that they had finished their first servings. "Well, Ginny, to be fair most men either make it obvious they're letting it grow out on purpose or keep it quite short to keep life convenient. Shoulder-length IS quite rare, you know. It achieves neither the coolness factor of say Dumbledore's Rapunzel-esque hair nor the convenience of short hair… I wish Hermione would get a crew cut or something, like leave maybe half an inch of hair, so that I could match it and have an easier time waiting for it to dry before sleeping." She didn't like imperial measurements, but wizards were so old-fashioned… "But it's considered a sign of a woman not being good at taking care of themselves and therefore reduces appeal, so I'm not so sure it would be good for her to do that."

Night was beginning to set in as dinner was wrapping up and conversation drifted to topics Harmony found less interesting, before Harry asked one very important question. "Where are all the gnomes? Crookshanks looks bored over there…"

There was a sudden silence at the table as the Weasleys tried to decide how best to tell him about the massacre earlier that day. "We used them for gunnery practice, then reductor curse drills, and to help Mrs. Weasley determine if she wants to have gnomes around in the future. They've been turned into fertilizer for the garden." Harmony said, completely un-bothered as she ate some more of Molly's homemade ice cream.

"…Why?"

She frowned and looked up at the hard tone she didn't expect "Hmm?"

Harry looked horribly bothered "They didn't do anything to us… why would you do that? I can understand past examples of being horribly crass about killing things, but really…"

"It is in humanity's nature to change things that we think are in the way. The gnomes have to be eating something to survive, whether their net effect on the garden is good or bad i.e. whether they're eating pests or the plants, will soon be revealed." Harmony said. "Don't look at me like that, Harry. If I wasn't a killer I'm not sure you would have survived your first year, or that Riddle's whatever-it-was would have been put down in Ginny's first year without loss of life. None of our hands are clean… though we wish they were, which is what divides us and those who kill for pleasure."

"Still, couldn't you have found some non-lethal way to remove them?"

"That would have been a lot harder, besides, we needed to keep practicing our skills if we want to survive this coming year, particularly as I'm unlikely to regain the use of my hand until next summer." She held up the stump, which looked to have regenerated the full wrist bone set already. "We need to have Hermione conditioned for being able to pull the trigger on a target as soon as possible. We are NOT going to condition her by having her actually kill anyone, because that opens up a whole new can of post-traumatic stress disorder, but we need to make sure that at the decisive moment she CAN pull the trigger as many times as she needs to."

Harry looked conflicted. "I don't like it, but I suppose it is important with your handicap—uh, sorry—that she can protect herself."

"Thank you for understanding." She nodded, ending the conversation, before leaning toward Ginny "The clash of moral compasses is already beginning." She whispered triumphantly to an eye-roll from the ginger girl. Chatter started up again eventually around the table and Ron leaned in to ask about contact with Sirius while Harmony thought of something she wanted to ask Fred and George. She waited until the brief exchange about Sirius was over to say "Hey, Fred, George, why didn't you guys ever do de-gnoming by curse?"

"Well, Dad liked them, so we didn't want to kill them, and curses are kind of slow sot he gnomes would dodge back when we'd try to jinx them. Mum also insisted that we be physically active, but she never really explained why… I wonder… hey Mum!"

Molly Weasley looked over "Yes Fred?"

"I'm George."

"Whatever." She actually could usually tell them apart after looking at them for a few seconds, but she didn't let the twins know that. Her brothers didn't get ALL the mischief of that generation after all. "What is it?"

"Why'd you insist that we do the degnoming manually before, and on being so physically active?"

"It wasn't just surprise that let me take down four Death Eaters on my own, you know, I'd recovered enough of my stamina in the two months after Ginny was born, the last two had gotten to their wands before I could smear them across the floor, and I outlasted them because I did a lot of exercise to work off the fat from pregnancy each time… that's why I insisted on exercise for you lot, the Dark families are such aristocrats they don't do much manual work, so if it comes down to it again…" She left the rest unsaid. "Oh, look at the time… you really should be in bed, you'll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. Harry, if you leave your school list out, I'll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. I'm getting everyone else's. There might not be time after the World Cup, the match went on for five days last time."

"Wow! Hope it does this time…" Harry said.

Harmony on the other hand caught a minor detail "What do you mean you'll get Harry's things for him? We've already gotten our things, so you don't need to worry about us, but where are you going to get the money from to buy Harry his things?"

"Harry, on our visit to Gringotts before your second year, you did authorize me to use some money from your account for your school supplies each year, all unused money from that amount goes back to Gringotts along with the receipts." Molly Weasley said to satisfy the girl's question "Didn't you meet up with us at the bank? I would have thought with your attention to detail…"

"I must have missed it… sorry, it's just that I have a habit of keeping extremely tight track of my own finances and want to teach Harry the habit if it's possible."

Molly nodded "I don't fault you for that, being one of the have-not pureblood families means we need to keep tight track of things too. Honestly, Harry IS a bit too trusting sometimes, he should be very glad he has you to look after him."

Harmony's grinning reply was "I think he should be more worried that he's under the care of a soldier, but to each her own, I suppose."

Molly snorted "He was born into the care of one."

"I'm right here, you know." Harry spoke up.

"Oh, right, Harry, about the game lasting for over a day… can you IMAGINE the lines outside the public toilets, or what sort of condition said toilets will end up in, if the match goes on for five days? With the organizational skills we've seen so far of wizards, I'm quite sure the facilities will be wholly inadequate for the number of attendees."

Percy put in his own 0.02$ "Well, I agree with Harmony, but I was thinking something much less unpleasant, namely that I'd probably need to call the Aurors to help clear out my in-tray if I was away from work for five days."

"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Perce?" Fred said.

Percy flushed enough to be visible even in the dim lighting "That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway! It was nothing _personal_!"

"It was. We sent it." Fred whispered to the younger children as they left the table to go to bed. Harmony and Hermione rolled their eyes in identical fashion at that.

* * *

Harmony checked her watch again as she woke up this time, found it was about right for dawn i.e. 4 AM, shook her twin awake and had to block a haymaker. Maybe making Hermione do too much exercise for the last month and a half wasn't such a good idea if she was reflexively throwing punches on waking up… "Time to get ready, I'll wake Ginny, you go brush your teeth and wash your face. You might want to tone down the wake-up punches, because Mum, Dad and I can block in time, but you don't want to knock Ron's lights out, or anyone else's, people are not alarm clocks that you can just hit snooze on… well, this is like hitting the snooze button, but the amount of time you'll get to snooze will differ depending on who's waking you and whether you're on the top or bottom of a bunk bed."

"Have you quite finished yet?" Hermione had already gotten up, finished putting on her under-shirt and pants and vanished into the stairwell as she spoke.

"Yep, don't forget your body armour and pistol!" Harmony called after her as she slung the Battle Rifle on her right shoulder via its strap, receiving a muffled affirmative in reply. Then she went about hanging her submachine gun across her body armour covered chest with its strap around her left shoulder and neck, as well as picking up her pack of supplies she'd be bringing to the World Cup. This pack included a week's rations, water canteen, a bottle of water purification tablets, first aid kit, folded shovel and several cigarette lighters. It also included a large supply of ammunition. Reloading would be a bitch, but she could always slot and hold her submachine gun under her right arm and reload with her left, load the Battle Rifle via using the bipod and her shoulder/face to hold it in place. She could also resort to wand use for _Bombarda_-spamming to clear away large numbers of enemies in like grenade spamming in video games.

Once they got downstairs, four boys soon came down after Molly woke them and Harmony questioned "Where's the three older boys? They're Apparating… so why aren't they taking us by side-along?"

"Percy's not that experienced at Apparating, so he can't side-along people safely, and we'd have to make multiple runs. Plus, we'd have to sign in anyhow, so we might as well take the Portkey designated for this neighbourhood. And honestly, side-along isn't that pleasant." Mr. Weasley explained. "So, what do you think of the outfit?" It was an old golf shirt with jeans only a bit too big for him, held up by a thick leather belt.

"The outfit's not bad, Mr. Weasley, it should blend in more or less, which is perfect." Harmony told him.

"Good, good. Thanks." He said as his wife began labelling out porridge and put a bowl in front of him.

"Why's Mrs. Weasley not coming?" Harmony asked suddenly, having overlooked this until now.

"I never really had a thing for Quidditch, I mean really, all that really matters in almost all the games is who has a better or luckier Seeker." Mrs. Weasley glared around the table to make sure all the boys kept their stupid mouths shut.

"We agree." Harmony nodded solemnly "Still, it's interesting to watch the commentators pretend that's not the truth, pretend that the other six players per team are anything other than a side-show to keep the audience occupied while the Seekers search. Just because something is stupid doesn't mean it's pointless if it has enough followers."

"Why can't we just Apparate too?" Fred tried to change the subject from the blasphemy the three women—Harmony and Hermione's sheer physical size precluded calling them girls—were spewing.

"You haven't passed your Apparition Test yet, or did you forget that the official lessons are held in Sixth Year?" Molly reminded them.

"You have to pass a test to Apparate?" Harry asked, showing he really needed to read more instead of wasting his time daydreaming. Maybe having people around to save the day just in case wasn't good for his habits…

"Oh yes. The Department of Magical Transportation had to fine a couple of people the other day for Apparating without a license. It's not easy, Apparition, and when it's not done properly it can lead to nasty complications. This pair I'm talking about went and splinched themselves." Everyone else around the table winced.

"Splinched?"

Mr. Weasley explained for the confused boy. "They left half of themselves behind. So, of course, they were stuck. Couldn't move either way. Had to wait for the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad to sort them out. Meant a fair old bit of paperwork, I can tell you, what with the Muggles who spotted the body parts they'd left behind…"

"Were they okay?" Harry looked concerned.

"Oh yes. But they got a heavy fine, and I don't think they'll be trying it again in a hurry. You don't mess around with Apparition. There are plenty of adult wizards who don't bother with it. Prefer brooms… slower, but safer."

"And more fun, I'd imagine, to fly regularly. Harmony, did your people learn anything interesting about Apparition and Splinching?"

Harmony put in the study results they'd gotten thus far on the subject. "Scientifically speaking, being splinched is a quantum coordinate editing glitch, when some chunks of matter have coordinates edited and some chunks fail to be relocated. However, since the editing software, in this case the mind, knows that the sections ought to be attached it compensates by making the failures be in sections, so you won't end up with two distinct clouds of cells on each side. It maintains a stable portal between the sets of coordinates in question, so you don't end up with a set of bloody chunks of people in one place and the remainder in another. It usually takes some help to get them out of being stuck and if left alone long enough… the portals should in theory fail and your chunks should come apart…" Then her mind took a detour into the sewage system "I'm wondering if the mechanism has been used for fetish play before, I mean unless the portals are immovable and put you into stasis like petrifaction SOMEONE must have been crazy enough to try it…"

"…I did not need that mental image at this time of day." Mrs. Weasley muttered, reaching over to put a hand over Harmony's mouth to prevent her from rambling further. The brunette blocked with her right arm and nodded acquiescence. "Must you be so twisted?"

Harmony shrugged, grinning "Ah, well, child soldiers never end up being quite right in the head. Besides, blood and death bring about a pretty similar reaction in humans to arousal, so… you get the idea. So, you were saying Percy wasn't that practiced at it yet… I hope we don't have any accidents…"

"Nah, he passed the test two weeks ago, he should be alright given he's been Apparating downstairs every morning since then, and nothing bad's happened, even though it's long distance this time the difficulty shouldn't be much different, we've shown him the pictures of the Apparition zone and he knows where it is on a map." George said.

"Charlie on the other hand had to take the test twice." Fred supplied "He failed the first time, Apparated five miles south of where he meant to, right on top of some poor old dear doing her shopping."

"Yes, well, he passed the second time." Mrs. Weasley said.

"So, Dad, why are we up so early if we're just taking the Portkey for this neighbourhood? Is it far?" Ginny asked.

"No, we only need to walk a short way. It's just very difficult for a large number of wizards to congregate without attracting Muggle attention. We have to be very careful about how we travel at the best of times, and on a huge occasion like the Quidditch World Cup…"

He was cut off by Molly pouncing on the Weasley twins "Your pocket, George? You should know that I always had an eye for what Gid and Fab would hide in their pockets all the time."

"And you learned to recognize full pockets because they'd bring you candy when you were little to bribe you to stay quiet about their misbehaviours that you'd see?" Her husband teased.

She flushed as her sons burst out laughing "Arthur, that's not the point." She whipped her wand out and pointed it at George's pocket "_Accio_!" Several candies flew out of said pocket into her hand. "Do you know what it could mean for your father if the Minister or someone else ate one of these by accident and was embarrassed by it? Sense of humour or no things could get very ugly." She hissed furiously, her fist tightening around the candies so that the wrappers made crinkling sounds and there was the soft cracking of some of the candies breaking. "Empty your pockets, NOW!"

The twins seemed rather subdued as they petulantly emptied their pockets, grumbling that they would have been careful about them since attention to detail was a critical skill for successful pranks anyhow. "And we spent six months working on the basic configuration of the various candy lines too! You can't tell us we're not allowed to field test them before someone else gets the idea and files for a patent!" Fred grumbled.

"Six months? So THAT'S why you didn't get more OWLs!" Molly yelled before forcing herself to calm down a bit. "I'm hoping anything else you might have taken with you to test does NOT have a chance of getting yourselves or your father into real trouble?" The twins nodded, still annoyed, and she hmpfed in reply before turning to her husband. "I'll send Bill, Charlie and Percy along around mid-day. Have a lovely time, all of you."

The twins nodded curtly, mumbling something like "See you later Mum" before walking out the front door with their packs.

When it came Harmony's turn to say goodbye, she rested her hand on the grip of her submachine gun "You have my word that I will make sure nothing too bad happens."

"Thank you, Harmony. I hope that you will use your firepower responsibly as you seem to have in past years." Inwardly Molly was thinking that if Harmony wasn't responsible half of Slytherin House would have died of "unknown causes" already.

The brunette saluted, without standing to attention, before striding out of the door after Harry. She tailed him as he seeked out Mr. Weasley to ask "So how _does _everyone get there without all the Muggles noticing?"

"It's been a massive organizational problem. The trouble is, about a hundred thousand wizards turn up at the World Cup, and of course, we just haven't got a magical site big enough to accommodate them all. There are places Muggles can't penetrate, but imagine trying to pack a hundred thousand wizards into Diagon Alley or platform nine and three-quarters. So we had to find a nice deserted moor, and set up as many anti-Muggle precautions as possible. The whole Ministry's been working on it for months. First, of course, we have to stagger the arrivals. People with cheaper tickets have to arrive two weeks beforehand. A limited number use Muggle transport, but we can't have too many clogging up their buses and trains. Remember, wizards are coming from all over the world."

"Apparently wizards have no appreciation of the sheer volume of air travel occurring all the time across the globe." Harmony chimed in.

"For someone unfamiliar with the delicate art of statistics, the safety numbers on airplanes are not reassuring, and if you are unfamiliar with the idea as almost all wizards and witches are, being stuck inside a metal tube held aloft by the burning of potentially explosive liquids sounds like a health hazard." Arthur said diplomatically. "And I do realize that it's way more legitimate-sounding than sitting on a narrow piece of wood held aloft by a few muttered words and engraved runes, but the fact of the matter is most wizards and witches are insular enough that they don't think that way."

"Pride, the first of all sins. So how do they get there then?"

"Yes, well, back to the point… Some Apparate, of course, but we have to set up safe points for them to appear, well away from Muggles. I believe there's a handy wood they're using as the Apparition point. For those who don't want to Apparate, or can't, we use Portkeys. They're objects that are used to transport wizards from one spot to another at a prearranged time. You can do large groups at a time if you need to. There have been two hundred Portkeys placed at strategic points around Britain, and the nearest one to us is up at the top of Stoatshead Hill, so that's where we're headed."

"Did the Weasleys use to own the hill? Because stoats are similar to weasels, and by the name…?" Harry wondered.

Arthur chuckled "Well, it was named such jokingly by a Weasley long ago."

"So what sort of objects are Portkeys?" Harry asked.

"Well, they can be anything. Unobtrusive things, obviously, so Muggles don't go picking them up and playing with them… stuff they'll just think is litter…"

Harmony's fists clenched in annoyance "I'm guessing that's why neighbourhood cleanup initiatives haven't been around for a while now? Because it got in the way of wizards?" _And was too communistic for the US and many Western European countries to stomach? Ugh, damned paranoid politicians… or assholes… wait, no, those terms are usually synonymous._

Arthur frowned "I don't think so."

"I think it's that people would go missing during the events or vanish and be returned damaged after the wizards finished having fun with them." Harmony bit out.

"Can you please stop the hating?" Arthur asked "You're starting to seem like you're blaming everything bad on wizards just cause you can."

"Sorry, but with the Pureblood Supremacy movements throughout history, you must admit that it's plausible if it's a Pureblood Supremacist that set up the Portkey to act as a trap."

Arthur hummed "THAT I can accept, it's not just hating for no reason. I suppose it's possible, but Portkeys are pretty tightly regulated in recent years after You-Know-Who fell, so…"

"Good." Harmony said. "Race you, Hermione?" She asked her twin as they reached the base of Stoatshead Hill.

"No thanks, you'd out-last me even if you didn't have a smaller pack."

"It's heavier than yours though since I need to carry much more ammunition."

"Fine… let's go." Hermione did the right thing to not give her twin a lead as she accelerated rapidly. Harmony caught up to her three-quarters of the way up and reached the top a bit ahead. "Well, you're still stronger and faster than me." Hermione was breathing fast and deep as she said this.

"You'll get better with time, let's look around for the Portkey… look for something that looks like junk." both walked around looking down and breathing deeply until the rest arrived.

* * *

**A/N**: The canon Hermione was annoyingly unfit physically and kept on getting overshadowed by the boys. I won't let male dominance obscure the true power of knowledge here unlike JKR. Knowledge meant she understood the power of fitness, and subsumed herself to her mother's planned training.

* * *

"Whew, you girls are fit." Mr. Weasley panted, wiping his glasses on his sweater as the rest arrived "Well, we've got ten minutes… Now we just need the Portkey. It won't be big… Come on…"

"Wait, someone's over there!" Harmony pointed with her pistol at the two silhouettes coming over the other edge of the hill.

"Looks like Arthur is already here…" She and her twin heard a man's voice distantly "Well, son, let's find the… what's this?" The figure bent down before straightening up and shouting "Hey, Arthur! Over here! We've got it!"

"Guess we won't need to bother then." Mr. Weasley said, recognizing the voice. After all, Fred and George had been playmates with the man's son before due to being the only wizarding children of their age in the area, and the three were still on friendly terms…

* * *

**A/N**: Review Replies!

**Blastbone**: I would comment, but you'll be seeing it within a couple chapters anyhow.

**Kaery91**: I think the only real things that needed to change for that Omake to come true is Harmony deciding that having a companion on the Path of the Dread Lord wouldn't be so bad, after all, her parents offer a good example. This would mean she had to prefer imitating her mother to her aunt and she wouldn't bother trying to hook Harry up with others or pushing him away. The Weasley twins did their de-gnoming manually since it was a good deal of fun (also, see what Molly said about exercise) as long as you weren't so soft they bit you. Also spells fly a bit too slow to be sued to target the little buggers with precision curses. It would be like trying to kill a cockroach with a hammer. Semiautomatic sniper rifles wouldn't be much different from a Battle Rifle set to semi-auto, except bigger calibre and punch for most of them.

REVIEW!


	4. Destiny Oblivion

A/N: My opinion on _Obliviate_ fills this chapter. Harmony's mental instability is seen even more. I fear for what will become of her…

In other news, I just began reading _The World God Only Knows_. Really? 153cm and only 41 kg is healthy for a slim girl? MY GOD that's dust on the wind compared to Harmony's 60 kg at that height (see Ch 2 of _Nanite Hive_), but then again I suppose a Young Miss type would be different from a girl stuck doing hundreds of chin-ups regularly and running around in the muck with a supply pack clutching a gun.

* * *

Chapter 4: Destiny Oblivion

_Stoatshead Hill, Near Ottery St. Catchpole, Late August, 1994_

"Amos!" Arthur called out, striding over to the man who'd shouted. Harmony tucked her weapon at her hip as they entered visual contact range, then when Mr. Weasley shook hands with the bearded wizard holding an old boot without ill effect, she, lurking near the back of the group, safetied her weapon, locked its safety back in and holstered it. She was on a hair trigger today because a major event like the Quidditch World Cup would be an excellent opportunity to show off the power of Pureblood Supremacist forces within the island of Britain, and with the relatively isolationist natures of Magicals this could be a way to intimidate them into staying out. Either way, any terrorists in her lanes of fire would receive 10mm or 7.5mm death. She could allow nothing less. She snapped out of it as Mr. Weasley began introductions "This is Amos Diggory, everyone. He works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?"

"Hi." Cedric nodded to them. Harmony's over-excitable hormones didn't even twitch at this because while he was handsome the potential intelligence and magic levels he had weren't exactly top notch. He got to where he was, well above average as a student at Hogwarts, by hard work, nothing more, nothing less.

This was unlike Harmony's father who, though at a lower percentile in terms of handsomeness, had extremely diverse interests and great general knowledge, as well as very high rates of learning and retention. He was also very creative and had all the other hallmarks of great potential. Those aspects, in Harmony's gauge, were why her mother had chosen to escalate their relationship beyond the good friends they'd become back in the day. Her mother had only said he was intellectually competitive, a good person, and relatively easy on the eyes. She might be reading too much into it, but better than too little. She'd read of all the things Man had done over the eras to oppress those different from them, and the fact that women would have done similar things—albeit to a lesser extent as maximum biological fitness was FAR lower than possible for men—didn't excuse all their sins…

…Not even when the Man under her scrutiny was her father, who had never tried any of those things and was, indeed, extremely against them and heavily pro-equality as well as having been the one to teach her half her hatreds in the first place with his introducing her to several history books and occasional private chats about the subject. _What is wrong with me?_ To distract herself from her mental self-flagellation she deployed a salutation at the end of the crowd greeting Cedric, though Fred and George merely nodded, not quite having forgiven him for how hard he'd made Harry, and the whole team for that matter, work last year on the Quidditch Pitch.

"Long walk, Arthur?" Amos Diggory asked.

"Not too bad. We live just on the other side of the village there. You?"

"Had to get up at two, didn't we, Ced? I tell you, I'll be glad when he's got his Apparition test. Still… not complaining… Quidditch World Cup, wouldn't miss it for a sackful of Galleons, and the tickets cost about that. Mind you, looks like I got off easy… All these yours, Arthur? Even with the best favours you could pull…" Amos grimaced. Being old friends (and drinking buddies at each other's weddings) the two were pretty frank about finances to each other.

"Only the redheads. We brunettes fielded our own costs." Harmony said proudly, knowing that a presentation of financial might would be good even if this wasn't a Pureblood Supremacist—Hufflepuff House would be the ideal place for a true Slytherin, and Diggory's relatively modest displayed potential could be a ruse—since money bought power, indirect or no, even in the best of situations like where she came from. Her family was a prime example of a military-industrial complex growing large enough to engulf nations and suppress other rival complexes from potentially rising…

Arthur was surprised "Oh… hmm so that was why I managed to get tickets in the Top Box for all of us instead of just me and Harry… you should have told me, Harmony."

"The Top Box, Arthur? Impressive… I presume this is Harmony Shepard, the 'Berserker' my son referred to as being a frequent companion of Harry… ah hello Mr. Potter, my eyes must be getting old if I can't tell hair that looks just like James' from brunette curls in this dim light at a glance anymore." Amos chuckled. "Ced's talked about you, of course. Told us all about playing against you last year… I said to him, I said 'Ced, that'll be something to tell your grandchildren, that will… You beat_ Harry Potter_ once!'"

Cedric looked uncomfortable, possibly since Harmony was glaring at him as if threatening him to say something "Harry fell off his broom, Dad. I told you. It was an accident…"

"Yes, but _you _didn't fall off, did you?"Amos patted his son on the back proudly. "Always modest, our Ced, always the gentleman . . . but the best man won, I'm sure Harry'd say the same, wouldn't you, eh? One falls off his broom, one stays on, you don't need to be a genius to tell which one's the better—"

Cedric cut him off indignantly "One hundred Dementors, Dad. Harry was closer to them and has had a worse life so far. I shouldn't need to say any more!" Mr. Diggory looked vaguely taken aback.

Harmony smiled slightly at the claim. "Your father is half-right, Cedric, thank you for defending Harry, but he is half-right, you didn't fall off. It was the outcome that mattered, even if it's attained by luck, the result, in numbers and opinions, quantitative and qualitative, is what really counts at the end of days."

"You've got a good head on your shoulders, young lady, I apologize for insulting your boyfriend" Her eye-twitch made Amos choose his next words carefully. "I was just… A father's pride in his son's achievements sometimes goes a bit over the top…" He shrugged awkwardly, trying to pass off the previous apparent verbal faux pas as just not being that great when talking to strangers.

"Must be nearly time." Mr. Weasley changed the topic "We've got a couple minutes left… Do you know whether we're waiting for any more, Amos?"

"No, the Lovegoods have been there for a week already and the Fawcetts couldn't get tickets. There aren't any more of us in this area, are there?"

"Not that I know of… it's a minute off… We'd better get ready… You just need to touch the Portkey, that's all, a finger will do."

After some jostling and annoyance, Harmony started ordering people around and surprisingly they listened "Alright, someone without a really bulky bag crouch under it, everyone else, stand angled like this, spiraling out, like a swirl." Now the ten of them could all fit.

"Three… Two… One…"

Harmony felt the object do something. Later study would say it scanned for psionic presences in contact with it in the moment before activation before she was thrust into a wormhole oriented with radial coordinates respect to the nearest major gravity well. That would explain why people Portkeying long distances didn't land on their sides after all… They were shoved through a tunnel of swirling colour, in other words, an aerated tunnel of hyperspace, before exiting and falling toward the ground on the other side. The two adults, Cedric and the brunette twins kept their footing (if barely in Hermione's case) while the other six had fallen over unceremoniously. The tired-looking harried bureaucrats, if Harmony was interpreting this right, in front of them were logging arrivals. One had a large gold watch and the other a thick roll of parchment and a quill. Both were laughably dressed and would have utterly failed to blend in even in an insane asylum. _Tweed suit plus thigh-length galoshes… kilt plus poncho… do these wizards ever, I don't know, look out onto the streets? What do they wear at HOME?_ "Seven past five from Stoatshead Hill." The guy with the watch said to the one with the log book.

"Morning, Basil." Mr. Weasley greeted the one with the kilt, who chucked it into a bin of used Portkeys beside him. There was an old newspaper, an empty, crumpled can of pop and a punctured, deflated soccer ball. _Yeah, anyone doing neighbourhood clean-ups would be in for a nasty surprise…_ Harmony thought.

"Hello there, Arthur," the man replied, sounding tired "Not on duty, eh? It's all right for some… We've been here all night… You'd better get out of the way, we've got a big party coming in from the Black Forest at five-fifteen. Hang on, I'll find your campsite… Weasley… Weasley…" He was looking down his list. Harmony mentally corrected herself, apparently he not only logged booked arrivals but also directed them to the appropriate area of this enormous space of camping land which no doubt had several different managers. He pointed as he spoke next "About a quarter of a mile's walk over there, first field you come to. Site manager's called Mr. Roberts. Diggory… second field… ask for Mr. Payne."

"Thanks, Basil." Mr. Weasley said, waving them all to follow him.

Harmony stopped him with a hand on his arm "Stop, Mr. Weasley. I need to get my compass, make sure we don't go off-course in the mist…" she fished said implement out and got the bearing, then they moved off. After ten minutes of quick walking a stone cottage next to a gate came into view range in the mist. "This should be right… yeah, I can see hundreds of tents in the mist… and the sun's coming up over the hill behind them so it's lighting up the woods behind them." The sun had just begun to crest the ridge in the distance about forty-five degrees off to their right (Basil had pointed them northeast).

"I'll see you later, Amos, Cedric." Arthur said.

The other father present nodded "Same to you, Arthur, Mr. Potter, both Misses Shepard."

They approached the cottage door after saying their goodbyes. An obviously Muggle man was standing in the doorway, looking out at the tents and into the distance for the new arrivals of the day. A surface passive scan told Harmony that he didn't know what was going on, though something may or may not have been simmering deep down, she thought she felt a nagging whisper of something she wasn't sure about… "Morning!" Mr. Weasley called, snapping the man out of his zoning out and prompting him to reply similarly. "Would you be Mr. Roberts?"

"Aye, I would. And who're you?"

"Weasley… two tents, booked a couple of days ago?"

Mr. Roberts looked at a list he had tacked to the door "You've got a space up by the wood there. Just the one night?"

"That's it."

"You'll be paying now, then?" Usually he charged at the end or halfway through for longer stays, but one night? Yeah it was better to get it over with early.

"Ah… right… certainly…" He pulled a roll of British bills out of his pocket and started to count out the money… "That's about right, yeah?"

Mr. Roberts found it essentially correct (though a few pounds over) despite the speed of counting the bills "Nice counting skills… now, this extra one-pound note goes back to you and change, change…" He rummaged about in a tin for the coins.

Arthur shrugged "Eh, my department is short on funding these days so we have to be pretty good at counting money." Later when Harmony was rewriting her memoirs he'd ask her to make wizards seem stupider so Muggles didn't feel as threatened subconsciously.

"Glad you're good at it, I had two try and pay me with great gold coins the size of hubcaps ten minutes ago…" He handed over the change. "Never been this crowded… Hundreds of pre-bookings… People usually just turn up…"

"Is that right?" Arthur said, looking worried the Muggle might be noticing stuff. Harmony thought he should be more worried if Mr. Robert pretended not to notice.

"Aye… People from all over. Loads of foreigners. And not just foreigners. Weirdos, you know? There's a bloke walking 'round in a kilt and a poncho…"

Mr. Weasley frowned "Shouldn't he? I was under the impression people could wear whatever they liked in this country?"

"Yeah, but it's like some sort of… I dunno… like some sort of rally. They all seem to know each other. Like a big convention, Comicon or something."

At that time there was a soft pop of a wizard appearing out of thin air next to Mr. Roberts "_Obliviate_!" He said sharply, wiping Mr. Roberts' short-term memory.

"A map of the campsite for you. And your change." He said in a docile tone. Harmony was strongly tempted to radio her mother for a strategic thermonuclear strike on her position right now. After all, what is one but the sum of one's experiences? And these wizards were just stomping over the Muggles willy-nilly… to her, losing one's memory was about equivalent to murder. If she gained power, Obliviate would be put on the Unforgivable list, only licensed to medical practitioners with a mountain of paperwork much as how the Cruciatus used to be used as a defibrillator and the Imperius as a way to help rehabilitate after nerve damage. Either that, or Magicals' future… there wouldn't be a future for them.

Thinking of not having a future made her think of something else. The man looked vaguely familiar from somewhere… but she couldn't place where…

"Thanks very much." Mr. Weasley said before heading off toward the gate to the campsite, the tired looking _Mind-rapist… I mean Ministry wizard_—Harmony sarcastically corrected her thought—following them.

Once out of earshot of Roberts, the tired bureaucrat complained to Arthur "Been having a lot of trouble with him. Needs a Memory Charm ten times a day to keep him happy, not like the gu the next field over who only needs it like five times a day. And Ludo Bagman's not helping. Trotting around talking about Bludgers and Quaffles at the top of his voice, not a worry about anti-Muggle security. Blimey, I'll be glad when this is over. See you later, Arthur." Then he Apparated away.

"I thought Mr. Bagman was Head of Magical Games and Sports," Ginny was frowning "He should know better than to talk about Bludgers near Muggles, shouldn't he?"

"He should, but Ludo's always been a bit… well… _lax _about security. You couldn't wish for a more enthusiastic head of the sports department though." Harmony didn't care for this, anyone in SI's subordinate governments who couldn't keep their mouth shut on confidential matters would soon find themselves out of a job, and she'd fire Bagman in an instant if she were in charge "He played Quidditch for England himself, you know. And he was the best Beater the Wimbourne Wasps ever had."

Most of the tents they passed were ordinary save the failures of chimneys, bellpulls and sometimes weather vanes, but sometimes they were so completely ridiculous that Harmony wondered how these arrogant pigs—sadly typical of any human who had something else others didn't—could ever have kept themselves hidden long enough for the Industrial Revolution to rear its head so that normal non-psionic humans could kick the psychics' collective asses any day they felt like it. _Three floors and four turrets? Much wow… I should just have driven a T-1985 here… it would have stood out less, after all, only one floor and one turret would be involved, though granted it would move and have four track pods._ That was basically an elongated T-1984, sharing mostly the same components with the new MBT but with extra cargo space and rear doors sourced from the T-1955 series. It was still overall so similar to the T-1984 it was generally referred to as the "T-1984 Command Tank Variant" or just T-1984C (SI didn't get into enough wars for the T-1984B, the first real version of the tank, to have needed to be significantly revised twice within 10 years of its inception up to the D model).

"Always the same," Mr. Weasley grinned as they passed a tent with a front lawn, complete with sundial, birdbath, and cobblestones. "We can't resist showing off when we get together. Ah, here we are, look, this is us." They'd reached the edge of the woods, with an empty space marked by a sign that read "Weezly". "Couldn't have a better spot!" He said cheerily. "The field is just on the other side of the wood there, we're as close as we could be." He hoisted his backpack from his shoulders. "Right… no magic allowed, strictly speaking, not when we're out in these numbers on Muggle land. We'll be putting these tents up by hand! Shouldn't be too difficult… Muggles do it all the time… Here, Harry, where do you reckon we should start?"

Harry frowned for a moment, deliberating, before speaking the truth instead of submitting to male egotism. "I've never been camping in my life, if you're looking for survival skills, ask Harmony." Harmony found it quite nice that he could say that without any hint of a feeling of inadequacy.

_Well, he's starting to know his limits, not unlike what Mom told me about how Dad's male ego almost disappeared over time as they grew to be friends and he finished learning to accept and overcome reality… STOP. NO. NO. BAD MIND. I did swear I'd never go for the stereotype of finding someone like my father… right? But even zebra finches have that… ARRRRRGGGHHH!_ "Thank you for the endorsement, Harry. Hermione, give me a hand, will you? The best I'd do alone is a raincoat lean-to that I can nap in. Mr. Weasley, hold onto what we ask you to hold, thanks."

Once they finished, Hermione stood back for a good look at the two tents "…There are spatial expansion charms involved, right?"

"Yep." Mr. Weasley answered. "We'll be a bit cramped, but I think we'll all squeeze in. Come and have a look." It smelled faintly of cats inside the tent, which was decorated and arranged like an old-fashioned three-room apartment. "Well, it's not for long… I borrowed this from Perkins at the office. Doesn't camp much anymore, poor fellow, he's got lumbago." He showed them the four bunk beds in the men's tent, then picked up the dusty kettle and peered inside. "We'll need water…"

"There's a tap marked on this map the Muggle gave us" Ron supplied, having come in with the rest of them. "It's on the other side of the field."

"Ron, Harry, you two should go get the water, Hermione and I want to explore the campsite a bit if you don't mind." Harmony said quickly.

"That sounds good, the rest of us will get some wood for a fire?" Mr. Weasley suggested.

"But we've got an oven. Why can't we just…" Ron questioned.

"Ron, anti-Muggle security! When real Muggles camp, they cook on fires outdoors. I've seen them at it!" Mr. Weasley seemed awfully excited about the idea… Harmony hoped he didn't manage to burn the tents down too badly. She might be used to sleeping outside but Hermione was, though far more trained and resilient than the average person their age, probably still too soft to handle it without catching cold if it would happen to rain. Regardless, she really needed to have a talk with Hermione.

* * *

"I sensed no rage from you when they Obliviated that man. Explain." Hermione took a step back from the towering aura her sister was throwing off.

"Well, what else could they really have done?" She might have been trained a bit in the past couple months but she still wasn't quite fast enough to fully block a quick swat to the head from her twin who only pulled the strike at the last moment.

"A person is no more than the sum and synthesis of all their experiences, their memories, however buried or subconscious. To take someone's memory is little less than killing someone. Are you telling me that Mr. Robert DESERVED to be punished just because these imbeciles are too lazy or arrogant to learn to blend in? Your arrogance as a psychic astounds me, Hermione. I have no idea why I have to be related to someone so BLIND."

Hermione frowned, glaring right back "You wanted to say that for years, didn't you? And smack some sense into me?"

"YES. The first thing you should have thought when you realized the Magical World played for keeps i.e. life or death was to ask me to teach you how to operate guns, not question our parent's wisdom for equipping me to keep us both alive!" Harmony breathed deeply before continuing "Your holier-than-thou arrogance and moralistic behaviour pissed me off SO MUCH. I thought you'd gotten better at the end of last year with staying silent during me punishing Pettigrew, but it seems deep down you are no different. You've already bought into the idea that having psychic powers makes you better than the have-nots of the world… I won't tell Mother and Father this, to spare you the lecture from them, but this has GOT TO CHANGE or when the showdown comes…" Her voice dropped to a whisper "I don't want a war of annihilation Hermione and neither should you… help me, Hermione, help me bring change. Every one of these souls—" she gestured around broadly "—is finite and precious. And I'm close… so close to saving them all."

Hermione grabbed onto her older twin's shoulders "Harmony, I think your mental instability needs a bit of help… but at the end you're right… I've become… I don't know… maybe it's just human nature that we should think ourselves better just due to having something others don't…"

Her older twin sighed "Yeah… I think these mood swings are hormones probably, you know how teenagers are usually short-tempered… well, it was good talking it through with you and getting the point across. Now, let's go take another look at Mr. Robert, he looked familiar from somewhere."

Hermione's eyes widened "You thought so too?"

Harmony's eyebrows rose "Huh, I suppose I wasn't listening closely enough to your emitted thoughts if I missed that…"

* * *

Mr. Robert squinted closely at Harmony and Hermione "You look familiar from somewhere… back in '84 I was in London when the Psychic Dominator Disaster started, ended up in the same group of survivors as Jane Shepard and her husband Dan Granger… They talked about their daughters sometimes… and you do resemble them…"

"So that's where we recognized you from!" Harmony slapped her own forehead. "The British Army did take group photos of each group of survivors they recovered… and our parents kept their copies of their group's photo."

Mr. Robert leaned closer "I find it hilarious that they think just because we don't have their psychic powers that we have no resistance. I was resistant enough to survive that Psychic Beacon… the tiny power of one amplified psionic malware attack package trying to erase my memories is nothing to someone who fought despite a Beacon for weeks on end. I prod them into trying en times a day just to piss them off."

"That's good, hope you can keep this all quiet though. You know full well what would happen to technological and societal progress if we tried to integrate right now, right? It would grind to a halt, why bother discovering better substances when you can just cast more layers of wards or spells?"

"Heh, with the sermons your mother would give to us, it would be hard not to understand that sort of thing. Well, it was nice talking with you, but you better be off, the watchman should be back soon."

"Understood, see you later Mr. Roberts." Hermione said, Harmony nodded her goodbye before the two hurried off.

"These people really need to keep a tighter rein on their kids, as well as give kids a thoroughly non-magical life and education until they're old enough to handle it… but of course the parents are no doubt too LAZY to do it right" Harmony said in disgust as two very young witches raced past them on toy broomsticks, chased by a Ministry wizard. She rested her hand on her pistol as she saw three wizards either from North Africa or the Middle East sitting together in serious conversation. "I'm glad wizarding Arabian cultures seem more gender-equal than non-wizarding, and that they seem to be less regionally arrogant than most other wizarding cultures or they'd probably act patronizing on seeing witches walk around in the open." Really, if they were as close-minded compared to Arabic Muggle cultures as British wizards were compared to British Muggles (read: 9001 times worse) they'd probably have been mown down already after being evangelical toward enough witches. "I find myself disturbed that I'm stereotyping so much, but given they could be from Saudi Arabia, a country that forbids women from using one of the first inventions that reduced labour load, the wheel, to reduce their work loads and improve their tactical mobility, I cannot help but take caution on principle."

"Ugh, you've managed to turn me into one of those violence-is-always-the-answer people already, it's only been two months!" Hermione commented upon finding her hands also on her pistol and wand ready to draw and fire just in case.

Her sister snorted as they walked along toward where the boys should be getting water, since the males had been loaded down with more containers than they could plausibly haul back. "And since when has application of force not solved something? Those who tell you force, violent or not, doesn't solve the world's problems are at best fools and at worst tricking you into being a good little sheep following the pack. You have gun freaks from the United States who refuse to do background checks, the only way to deal with them is laws and harsh punishments. You have reactionaries clinging to their wealth in every nation resisting the scientifically proven idea of climate change, the only way to make them change is to force them to, politically, financially, or otherwise…" They moved into a large swarm of red tents decked in pictures. "I get the feeling these guys are fans of that person they have pictures all over their tents of… oh god that burns my eyes."

Hermione had already burst out laughing at the sight of a very old wizard in a flowery nightgown just in front of Harry and Ron in the line. He was arguing with a Ministry wizard who was holding out a pair of pinstriped trousers and clearly exasperated with the level of stupidity on display. "—_women _wear them, Archie, not the men, they wear _these…_" They caught as they closed the distance.

"Harry, Ron, buckets?" The two boys extended their arms so the bucket transfer would go easier.

"I'm not putting them on, I like a healthy breeze 'round my privates, thanks." Old Archie said stubbornly.

Harmony decided to club the arrogant (stubbornness stemmed from pride in one's actions and an unwillingness to accept change. In this case, where it was coupled with unwillingness to give a valid explanation that fit the situation appropriately i.e. dealt with the Statute of Secrecy, it meant nothing less than arrogance) old warlock over the head verbally for kicks—_waiting in line is BORING!_—with "Your privates are secondary to the Statute of Secrecy, sir, now please label yourself as a cross-dresser, a valid reason for wearing that, or put on something that does not violate the Statute of Secrecy. Guess what, do something to make yourself invisible and walk into a Muggle city, then LOOK AROUND and you'd realize this is not typical Muggle clothes. Now, please fix your mistake, or I can help this friendly Ministry official fix it for you."

The old man turned around and seemed about to speak before realizing he had to crane his head up quite far… and turn to the sides slightly to see the outsides of her arms with how large the young woman was relative to his old, shrunken frame "I'll change when I get back to my tent!" He grumbled, muttering about disrespectful youths as he turned around with a huff.

"Robes blend in better with Muggles than what you're wearing now." She said over-cheerily, glad that was over with as she turned to the tiredly smiling Ministry man "I hope that was helpful, sir, you seemed tired."

The Ministry person leaned closer, prompting a pistol under his chin by Harmony as he opened his mouth He backed up a bit, very slowly, swallowing nervously "I… did not expect you to have a gun, I hope you're licensed to carry it. I was just about to thank you, nothing more. You wouldn't believe how epicly these purebloods can fail."

"You're not a pureblood?"

At gunpoint, the man knew better than to refuse to answer, and honesty shouldn't hurt that much, the Ministry knew what he was anyhow so if this girl thought he was lying… he didn't want to die yet. "Halfblood, Father was a half-blood, Mother was a Muggle."

Harmony frowned "Never wondered whether or not she was coerced somehow?"

"No, my parents get along quite well and usually Mom gets her way if they disagree…"

"Good." She put her weapon away with a practiced double-click and thrust into her holster "I am sorry that I overreacted to your proximity. Seeing them Obliviate Mr. Robert made me think that most rapes by wizards never go reported, so…"

"…Ah I can understand that… I wondered too, but, well…" He shrugged.

"I think we both know what the other thinks of the current state of things. There is no need to say more, but rest assured, our time will come. Remember my name, Harmony Shepard, and remember what I have told you."

"Yes, Miss Shepard." He seemed to spot something over her shoulder "Goodbye, Misses Shepard." He nodded to both siblings before taking a wide route around them. "You there! Stop!" He hurried off after a young man in a leather corset and miniskirt.

Ron, following their gaze, mimed vomiting "I… did not need to see that."

"Why is it all the men who are fashion retards?" Harmony muttered.

"If you can't answer that question yourself you're not the Harmony I know." Ron snarked.

"Fair point there, Ron… oh, we're up." Hermione clapped her sister around the shoulder while the latter rolled her eyes.

"Well let's get to work with these pots and buckets… you two get the smaller containers and we get the big ones." Harmony said, divvying up the containers. Neither of the boys bothered to even try to protest, given the relative sizes of the people involved, there wasn't any grounds to protest.

On their way back they were hailed by many people, but Harmony always cut in before Harry could be dragged off or occupied. "Sorry, but we will come back when we AREN'T carrying a lot of water, then we can talk without dust getting in the water or our arms getting sore." Admittedly, the wrist-stump she planted on Oliver Wood's chest to maintain distance was probably a bit much, but hey, it was nicer than a foot right? She was still contemplating her reaction when Harry ended up getting the front of his shirt very wet when he waved like a buffoon at Cho Chang "Watch it Harry!" She barked at him "You'll catch cold if you're not careful! Ugh I'll cast a drying charm on you, stand still will you?"

Harry had stopped short "Aren't we not allowed to cast magic outside of school?" _Weird that I didn't get caught up on this when we were talking about the gnomes, but I suppose I was too horrified by her callousness to register this…_ he thought.

Harmony put her large bucket down and put her hand on his shoulder "Magic detected in public places is assumed to be indiscrete adult wizards or witches. It is only in the Muggleborn households that detectors will pin the blame on the children there. This society is run by purebloods, and this is just one of many ways to keep us downtrodden, to make us have less practice. It's just the way the ruling caste works, their first purpose is to keep the lower ones from rising up to challenge them." She took her hand off, pulled her wand out, and cast the charm. _Even my family isn't exempt from that stereotype…_

Meanwhile, Hermione was saying to Ron "My third wheel senses tingle."

"Third and fourth wheel you mean." He said. "Maybe when we're older I'd say 'double-date senses' instead." He probed for her reaction.

Harmony stuck her head between them before Hermione could reply beyond an eye-roll "Maybe, we'll see, she'll be too busy to date in school, but we note your application for review. Most likely she'll give you at least one chance because you've stuck with us through enough already to warrant that."

Hermione nodded slowly "She's right, Mom and Dad made it quite clear to me that dating before university, or in the case of the Magical World before finishing Hogwarts is a waste of time because the chances of it lasting are minimal… especially since I don't think I'm the type to be tied down so early, I want to do something with my life other than dealing with kids… Harmony, you're not the only one indoctrinated to thoroughly hate chauvinism in all its forms, so don't even start registering your surprise."

"You've really picked up on oration from Mother." The older twin was smiling indulgently. "Good…"

"I don't think I've seen any of them before, and they look to be around our age… you'd think not enough people would come from schools of a given country to band up in such a big group, right?" Harry, noting that the current exchange was over, suddenly pointed out a large group of unfamiliar teens talking together.

"Unless it's a partially school-sponsored trip." Harmony hypothesized. "Or they're wealthy people who usually socialized together and are thus hanging out, maybe even working on making more connections right now."

"Interesting… I never met anyone from a foreign school before. Bill had a pen-friend in Brazil though, years and years ago. He wanted to go on an exchange trip but we couldn't afford it. The guy pretended to get offended when he said he wasn't going and pranked him with a cursed hat to take his mind off the family finances. It made his ears shrivel up for a day, and Bill agreed it was hilarious. They eventually fell out of contact though."

Harry laughed, then said "I bet if it wasn't for Harmony hovering over me all the time I wouldn't have thought about there being other schools before I saw those students." This claim was why, in her fictionalization of a universe where she never existed and Hermione had normal parents, published under a pen-name, Harmony would write that Harry was amazed initially but felt stupid that he'd never realized there had to be other schools. (A/N: Refer to that re-scripted memoir known as _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_)

"I wouldn't say that, you should have more faith in your own worth, Harry." Harmony said, then looked at Ron "About Bill's pen-friend… 'Time crumbles things; everything grows old and is forgotten under the power of time…' As said by Aristotle. Such is the way of things at the end of days."

"But everything leaves a mark on the path of the universe, every decision, for example how much to swing my arms as I walk, changes the universe a little." Hermione parried.

"Truth… wait, they _still_ haven't got the fire started?" She said in wonder as they approached Fred and George who were waiting around looking annoyed. Apparently, though Mr. Weasley had a decent amount of sense in him, he was still Pureblood Wizard enough to have problems with matches (then again many Muggles did too). While waiting (unnecessarily) for the fire to heat up, Mr. Weasley gave them a boring but very useful run-through of the names and offices of various Ministry people hurrying by.

The older boys showed up as they were cooking eggs and sausages, or in Harmony and Hermione's case opening their ration tins. "Just Apparated, Dad." Percy said "Ah, excellent, lunch! Hmm… what have you got there?" He looked at the brunette twins.

"Rations, military food. We didn't need a fire for these things. Fires give away one's position and reduce your night vision, as well as making you visible from further away than the fire lets you see." Harmony lectured.

"She's right, but Death Eaters don't understand this. It was one of the things Lily taught us near the end of the last War." Mr. Weasley said "But this isn't night-time, and there aren't any attackers that we're concerned about, so say on frigid nights a fire is still better than not, even if it risks attracting those who are worse than beasts… namely people."

"I don't think this much reminiscing is good for you, Dad." Charlie said. Bill stayed quiet, also remembering the days of fear and defiance.

"Perhaps." Mr. Weasley shrugged as he prodded the fire.

* * *

"And as I predicted he would never even have been hired in Mother's organization." Harmony said after their encounter with one Ludo Bagman who seemed to be wearing a yellow and black version of prison stripes. He was also a gambler, which was another huge strike against him. "Fred, George, he is a gambler, and with his over-cheerful attitude, your money isn't coming back. He is most likely compulsive and will be a sore loser, as well as not paying you due to you two technically being underage. Of course I can have him face down in a ditch with his neck broken or a hole blown in his head to let the asshole nature leave when he goes on the run if you'd like that, but chances are he'll be caught and stuck in an asylum or caught by whoever major he pissed off if he does run, because of how inept he probably is at blending in with Muggles."

"That's a bit harsh, Harmony, maybe you shouldn't say it in public…" Mr. Weasley said.

"You'd be surprised how oblivious excited people can be, and I'm not talking all that loud either. It seems though that when I open my mouth, people around me listen… that is part of why I must be as explanatory as possible so that Hermione can learn before I go back to being quiet at Hogwarts."

"It's called charisma, Harmony, and an aura of power." Mr. Weasley said. "And the teaching is a good thing too."

She smiled, then popped that aura like a balloon "And I think Percy needs to change his underwear."

"What?" Fred and George said simultaneously.

"I think he just came when Crouch arrived." Harmony laughed at the violent blush that the Weasleys now sported and Percy's jaw-drop, which was full of something between horror and rage "So uptight… relax a little! It's not possible to speak two hundred languages, the best you can do is understand that many dialects and accents. His behaviour is also extremely suspicious. No one is that anal about insisting their ancestors were strictly law-abiding unless they have something to hide. His office in the ministry is also good for corruption, and the amount of stupid to not know there are SEVEN continents is incredible. I can understand no one coming from Antarctica, but which of the others is he leaving out? Or does he insist Eurasia is one continent? He is also arrogant and thoroughly disregarding of anyone he sees as lower on the totem pole, not even drinking the tea you poured for him."

"Mr. Crouch doesn't have time for—"

Harmony ignored him. "When the truth comes to bite you in the ass, Percy, don't let the door hit your behind on the way out, it hurts to be hit on a bite mark. Three seconds to drink tea in non-emergency times, and the tea wasn't even that hot so that's not a valid excuse, to show appreciation toward a subordinate's efforts is something he can't be bothered with. He also struts around like an authoritative jackass. I don't like his type, so uptight it's sketchy when the other Ministry people we've all seen so far, the standard type, are relatively relaxed. Well actually I don't like overly uptight people period so long as there is no major conflict happening, but that's not the point."

"So what's happening at Hogwarts exactly?" Fred asked as Harmony pointedly turned her back to a fuming Percy.

"That's classified information, until such time as the Ministry decides to release it!" Percy snarled, his anger redirecting. "You know quite enough already!"

"It is a life-threatening event with historically over one-half chance of death. If you want to die, then participate, but I will try to deconstruct it… such antiquated things should never have been resurrected." Harmony said, suddenly serious again.

"Hey, just because we're probably not going to actually enter doesn't mean we can't plan our prank schedule around it!" George protested, trying to defuse the sudden tension. "We'll help you deconstruct it if it's so dangerous."

"Thank you."

"I get the feeling that I should go make bets about Hogwarts still standing or not by the end of the year." Percy grumbled to his father "At least I'm LEGAL AGE to gamble!" He reminded the ginger twins, who waved dismissively at him.

* * *

As the day progressed, the Ministry seemed to give in to the blatant use of magic everywhere and Harmony lamented the fact that they didn't even have a decent enforcer corps. "At least back home…" She said to her twin "you know, anywhere where Mother has jurisdiction, typically police are allowed to employ shield-walls once a protest escalates into a real riot, even if they have to do paperwork afterward and submit recordings to prove there weren't any agent-provocateurs. You'd think they could just register everyone's wands on arrival and track magical signatures to fine them for use of magic, or even take the wands and lock them away for the duration of the event, but this is what a Pureblood-dominated society does instead." The next time she'd see a similar event would be in the late 2000s (i.e. first decade of the third millennium AD) with Americans and gun control. "They can't get by without wands and refuse to learn, and so they act like it's their right to go around putting everyone else at risk without even registering."

"Can you stop the hateful monologues?" Hermione hissed back.

"Other than the fact that I need to lecture you on the truth, do you know what's the next most fun after having something you adore in life? Hating something. It's probably part of why evil exists at all. In my case it's a relatively benign form, directed to relatively good use, but still… You're in this world as the disadvantaged group, and so I have no problem upending the way of things to make life less unbalanced against you. If everyone has equal opportunity, a unified public education and they Purebloods are too stupid to learn enough to get by, it's their own—"

"It can be easily argued that you do not hate oppression so much as love equity." Hermione interrupted.

"This is why I said before that love and hate are no different, whereas indifference is opposite to either of them. Congratulations, you've managed to halt my monologuing for now." She patted her twin on the shoulder and moved off to their tent to inspect her weapons again.

"…I don't think you should inspect your weapons." Hermione said as she sat next to her sister and took out her own pistol, beginning to disassemble it. "You should inspect your mind."

The older sister didn't look up from her submachine gun's parts "Hallelujah, now tell me something I'm unaware of."

"I tore my hymen last week."

Harmony gaped at her twin, who giggled in reply, before saying "…You got me there. Did it hurt?"

Hermione shook her head "Too much adrenaline, it was during a sparring match with Dad when he was going very easy on me to not hammer me right away. It did end up being sore for a few hours afterward though. I overextended, my leg hurt more than it did even afterward."

"Lucky you, it hurt a LOT for me for some reason when I broke it on my fist at the end of last year, probably due to lack of adrenaline."

Hermione looked like she was trying to imitate a snake with jaw distension "THAT was what your later self meant about enjoying the hand while you still had it?"

Ginny poked her head in with a rustle of the tent-flap. "What are you two talking about?"

"Private affairs… maybe you're a bit young for this…" Hermione said the second part slower and quieter than the first, but Ginny still caught it and paled at the implications.

She nodded slowly… "Ah… I don't think I want to hear about icky fantasies about my brother from you, Hermione… Kay thanks bye!" She was gone an instant later.

"I suppose that's one way to do it…" Harmony muttered. "I don't feel like lecturing any more, and I doubt you're really in the mood to listen either. How about we check on the street vendors that are bound to show up at these events within about two hours before the stadium opens for entry, assuming it's closed to start?"

As the excitement mounted into the final hour before they would be allowed into the stadium—Harmony found this reasonable since it would prevent people from waiting in the stadium long enough to need to head to the toilets too early before everyone else arrived—they were accosted by various street vendors that showed up along the main path into the forest. Harmony bought four sets of Omnioculars, two for the labs. Studying them would be useful if she needed to record any magical phenomenon in the future, as it recorded in psionic wavelengths as well as the visible spectrum according to the description of being able to record magical effects (i.e. being able to record psionic illusions). The only problem would probably be powering them after the initial charge ran out, or figuring out how any reactor inside kept it going over time.

As the time of entry into the stadium approached, a deep, booming gong sounded beyond the woods and a series of green and red lanterns activated, lighting the path to the field from their camping area. "Pack up, Harmony, we've gotta move!" Hermione prodded.

"Wait up, ugh, having one hand makes prepping so much slower…" She was having a bit of trouble adjusting her weapons for comfort under the robes she'd put over them to hide the submachine gun and pistol. She was leaving her Battle Rifle in the tent since long-range combat in a stadium was unlikely and the weapon was too big to hide easily. Ideally, this would not come back and bite her in the ass later.

* * *

**A/N**: Review Replies!

**Blastbone**: Yeah, having an Immortal for a mother really helps her baseline fitness even if back in first year she was horribly unfit due to not exercising enough (see _HS and the Nanite Hive_ for details).

**Guest**: Harry Potter in canon is infinitely more Sue than Harmony ever will be. He angsts, acts like an idiot but has things always work out, is an abused orphan due to his arch-enemy, is great at a sport, gets the girl, has a prophecy about him, etc. He is also not usually maimed for the long term. Besides, if your dying civilization had to entrust its descendants to a watchman i.e. Kane… would you not make that watchman as capable as you can? Harmony might be a bit angsty but she has to act intelligently (even if it hurts and should be avoidable) to make things work, isn't related to the main villain of the story at all (besides "Threatens Hermione and means it = terminate immediately"), is only good at sports because of Hell Training, will not get the boy, etc.

**Kaery91**: Thank you for your continued support!

REVIEW!


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